


'Twas But a Dream of Thee

by Yveta



Series: How Many Ways Can a Grown Man Cry [1]
Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Murder, Flashbacks, Love Confessions, M/M, angst but a lot of fluff, hints at OCD, seriously you could knit an angora jumper out of some of this stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:56:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7145561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yveta/pseuds/Yveta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe has never told Emerson that he loves him. When tragedy strikes, and his past starts to catch up with him, will he regret not opening up? Or will he lose Emerson forever?</p><p>Set just over two years after the end of Series 4. Potential spoilers for all four series.</p><p>TW: some swearing and threatening language, violence, implied OCD</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

DC Emerson Kent pulled his dark grey overcoat tight around his body as he stepped out into the street. The warmth and noise, the very lives of the punters propping up the bar, all faded away as the pub door swung shut behind him.

“Come here, you.” The dark-haired woman in front of him turned round to straighten his lapel. “Just talk to him, yeah? He loves you - any idiot can see that.”

“We do talk, Erica. He just clams up when we touch on anything to do with his feelings.”

“Just your typical bloke then,” Erica joked.

“He’s hardly that” said Emerson, a small smile momentarily skipping across his face.

“True.” Erica enveloped Emerson in a hug and kissed his left cheek. “Now don’t leave it another three months before we have dinner together again. Shall I send your love to Finlay?”

Narrowly avoiding the faux-annoyed tap of Emerson’s hand on her upper arm, Erica released him from her embrace. She glided away down the street towards the bus stop, pausing only to buy a copy of Big Issue from the vendor a few feet away. A quick glance at his watch told Emerson that Joe would probably still be at his desk, where he had left him a couple of hours earlier with Miles, collating evidence for an upcoming prosecution. Emerson sighed heavily, his breath visible in the air like cigarette smoke. He and Joe needed to finish their conversation from earlier, though that was something he could happily put off a while longer. He should have known that bringing up the idea of marriage would cause Joe to panic, he being a man who struggled to verbalise his emotions at the best of times. It had been difficult enough getting him to agree to them buying a flat together.

Emerson began to trudge back in the direction of the station. With any luck, Joe would be nearly ready, and they could travel back home together. The air was heavy with mist – it was on nights like these that Emerson particularly felt the weight of all the history of Whitechapel. It was almost enough to make him want to fork out for one of Ed Buchan’s tours. Not tonight though. Tonight, all he wanted to do now was get home and curl up with Joe, assuming they could get past this latest obstacle. He manoeuvred his way past several other pedestrians, at one point being compelled to dance a sort of quickstep around a raucous hen party. At another time, he would have enjoyed people-watching, observing the tiny details that make up the vibrancy of life in the district: the elderly gentleman crossing the road swearing like a trooper at the bus drivers, the person behind him wearing a hoodie whose headphones were regurgitating music that Emerson thought he recognised from ‘The Blues Brothers’ film, the group of young men walking towards the East London mosque for Friday prayers.

As he rounded the corner, Emerson started to feel a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. He shifted the material on his coat to cover more of his exposed flesh, but the uneasy feeling remained unabated. During his time as a copper, he had developed a bit of a sixth sense about being observed, and he recognised the symptoms now. It was the same feeling he had had just before being attacked by the “Krays”. He spun around on the balls of his feet to look behind him, but he could make out nothing untoward. One street light was flickering on and off sporadically, blinking in the night like morse code. Emerson shrugged and continued his walk. Yet something was still off. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted his mobile phone, swiping right to unlock it. Joe’s number was pinned on the home screen, like a beacon. He shoved his left hand deep into his pocket to keep it warm while the other held the phone to his ear. It took only three rings before it was answered.

“DI Chandler”

“Joe, it’s me. I’m on my way back. Are you still at the station?”

“Em,” Joe’s voice sounded fatigued. “Yes, we’re nearly finished here. How was dinner?”

“Great. Erica was on top form.” The scars on Emerson’s rear were tingling now. He looked over his shoulder again, thinking he saw some movement in the shadows. A shop doorway stood to his left, offering a temporary shelter. As Emerson withdrew, the hooded funk-music fan passed him, catching his eye with a nod.

“Listen,” said Emerson, his words a low hum. “Can I get a lift back with you? - I don’t fancy getting the tube tonight.”

“What’s wrong?” He spoke a perfect fifth higher than usual. “Where are you now?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Emerson hoped that Joe couldn’t hear the echo of apprehension in his voice. “I’m only a couple of minutes away. Will you wait?”

“Of course I will,” said Joe. “Come up to my office.”

“I will. Look, about what I said earlier. I didn’t mean to…”

Joe interrupted. “I’ll see you shortly.”

“Oh. Alright. I love you.”

“I… um… You too,” muttered Joe.

Emerson couldn’t help the wry smile that twitched one corner of his mouth following Joe’s muted expression of affection. It did bother him, sometimes, that Joe appeared unable to say those particular three words, as if there was an unbridgeable crevasse between what he meant and what he said. Emerson appreciated that opening up had always been hard for Joe – he would just have to continue offering what he could until Joe was ready to bridge the chasm himself. Releasing his phone back into his pocket, he drew out from that same recess a well-worn folded piece of paper hidden within the covers of his appointment diary. He read the words upon it quickly, fluently. They were words he kept close to him and examined often.

He stepped back onto the pavement, scouting down the street behind him on the lookout for his unwelcome companion. He could see no-one. He shook himself, deciding that he was just being paranoid. He had been a bit jumpy ever since their flat had been broken into three nights earlier. Nothing had been taken – Joe had disturbed the intruder – but it still felt like a violation.

The hen party sashayed round the corner at the far end of the street. Several of them were tracing figures of eight on the ground with their feet as they attempted to walk. One step forward, two steps back.

 _That sounds like a metaphor for something,_ he thought.

He shifted round to face his direction of travel, when he felt something hard and cold pressing into his left side.

 

* * *

 

Joe exhaled the tight breath he had been unconsciously holding. He really did not want to resurrect their aborted discussion. He never seemed to be able to find the right words to make Emerson understand what he was thinking. His fingers lingered over the photograph of Emerson on his phone as he hung up the call. In the image, Emerson’s eyes were thoughtful as he leafed through a thick book. His dark hair, wayward in the breeze, framed his head like a curly halo. He sat underneath a tree, the sunshine dappling through the leaves onto his face. Joe wasn’t much of a photographer, but he felt that this was one of the best snapshots he’d ever taken. It had been a few months before, in the summer, when Emerson had persuaded him to bring a picnic over to Green Park on one of their rare days off together. They had spent an hour or so in Hatchards bookshop on Piccadilly – Emerson had wanted to find the next Game of Thrones novel – before strolling up the road to the park. It had been their lucky day. There were plenty of deckchairs available to sit on – Joe didn’t think he could have coped with sitting directly on the ground, even with Emerson’s thick green picnic rug knitted by his gran. Joe had then presented Emerson with his own book purchase.

“For you,” he had said, placing the volume on Emerson’s lap.

“The Complete English Poems by John Donne,” Emerson had looked quizzically at him. “Are you trying to educate me or something?”

A gentle laugh had escaped Joe’s throat. “No, I just… I thought you’d like it. He says what I don’t seem to be able to.”

Emerson’s frown had taken on a mischievous glint. “I thought John Donne’s poems were all about sex?”

Lost for words, Joe had looked down at his knees to avoid Emerson’s grinning face. He hated how awkward he always felt when it came to talking about feelings. His throat had seemed to have descended into his chest cavity, while his stomach had felt like it was both melting and boiling at the same time.

He had cleared his throat. “Just read the poem on page 188.”

Emerson’s smirk had faded as he flicked through the pages.

“The Good-Morrow?” he had said, looking at Joe.

Joe had nodded and Emerson had begun to read, first silently, then under his breath. The last stanza he had read aloud, his eyes cloudy as the sentiment became clear.

“My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”

 

“Knock, knock”

Joe hurriedly locked his phone and raised his head to see Miles entering his office.

“You not going back to your love nest yet?”

Joe blushed. “Em… Kent is on his way here. We’re going soon.”

“Well, don’t keep him up too late,” teased Miles. “Kid needs his beauty sleep.”

Miles, through his own brand of waggish humour, had proven to be a great support for Joe and Emerson. He had eased their transition from being simply colleagues to an established couple with a grace and encouragement that defied all appearances. Joe suspected that he had been instrumental in preventing Mansell from making too many vulgar jokes in the Incident Room.

The older policeman placed a print-out of an email on Joe’s desk.

“This has just come in, Sir. Update of prisoner releases in the area. Only three this week,” he glanced down at the page. “Er… Frank Brown, Will Bousfield, Kerry Upton.”

“Thank you Miles.” Joe filed the report neatly in the appropriate place.

“Well, I’ll be off then, Sir,” said Miles, turning to leave.

Joe swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple wedged in his throat. “He asked me to marry him.”

Miles stopped walking so suddenly that he nearly overbalanced. Regaining his footing, he slowly turned to face Joe, a look of mingled disbelief and delight animating his features.

“Well, not exactly asked _._ He told me to think about it. He says he doesn’t want to spend his life with anyone else.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing?”

“It’s not a _bad_ thing. I just… I can’t. Standing in front of people and making vows. The very idea terrifies me.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a big do, you know. Just the two of you, the registrar and a couple of witnesses.”

Joe reached for his tiger balm. “I know, but he… he deserves more. And I just can’t.”

“Have you told him this? Maybe he doesn’t want anything more than that.”

Joe grimaced and lowered his head to the table. “The conversation wasn’t exactly what you would call a success.”

Miles sighed, and lowered himself creakily into the leather chair opposite Joe. “You’d better tell me what happened.”

 

* * *

 

The afternoon sun had already started to fade at half two that afternoon, not that much daylight ever penetrated the dank corridors of Whitechapel CID. The atmosphere in the Incident Room was as dulled as the sky outside as the detectives performed various mundane tasks to put their latest case to bed before handing over to the CPS. Joe, sitting in his office, looked out at his team through windows that were fuggy with vapour or dust, he was not sure which.

 _If it is dust,_ he thought, _I’ll be having strong words with the cleaning contractors tomorrow._

The only movement in the room was Mansell attempting to throw a paper aeroplane at the back of Emerson’s head. The tiny missile glided forwards a few inches before spinning wildly and crash landing on the floor. Mansell looked up guiltily and, catching Joe’s appraising look, rapidly retreated into his paperwork. Joe took that as a cue to return to his own work. He could feel the beginning of a tension headache in his temples. It really was very stuffy in that office.

“Sir?”

Joe’s head jerked up at the hushed sound in his doorway. Emerson stood, leaning against the doorframe, file in hand.

“I’ve finished cross-checking our timeline with the witness statements, sir. It all matches up.”

Joe thanked Emerson for his hard work and diligence as he would any other of his team. They had agreed long ago that, while at work, they would be DI Chandler and DC Kent, no more no less. They had become very adept at compartmentalising, keeping their private lives in a locked box far removed from their professional selves. However Emerson was often much better at finding the key to that box.

“Joe… while it’s quiet, can I speak to you for a minute?”

Startled by the use of his first name, Joe splayed his hands on the desk and tensed his fingers. His headache was getting worse.

“I am quite busy actually, Kent,” he said.

“Please,” Emerson moved to shut the door. “It won’t take long.”

As Joe gave a hesitant affirmative, Emerson sat down. His limbs, Joe noticed, were unusually active. He was compulsively lacing and unlacing his fingers, and a light tapping sound under the desk suggested that his feet were restless also.

Emerson took a deep breath. “The break-in at home… it’s got me thinking. If something happened to one of us, we wouldn’t have any legal rights. I mean, you’re not my next of kin in the eyes of the law. If I… you know… my half of the flat would go to Erica. You might end up having to share with Mansell!”

Joe scowled at the prospect of flat-sharing with the man who was at that moment scratching his head with a spoon. “I would have thought it would be easy enough to arrange so you can leave the flat to whomsoever you wish?”

“OK, that may be true,” Emerson said, running his hands through his hair. “But you still wouldn’t have any rights as next of kin.”

“What’s your point, Emerson?”

“I think we should… what would you say to making this… us… more official?”

Joe’s level of discomfort had risen to previously unknown heights. He couldn’t feel his feet anymore. Some part of his brain, the part that wasn’t pounding in pain, was convinced that his chair was floating away with him sat in it.

“Um… well, we could go to see my solicitor about updating our wills if you want. I’ll phone her tomorrow morning and make an appointment for next week.”

All of Emerson’s body stopped fidgeting at once. He leaned back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling. He looked deflated, vulnerable. Slowly, he sat up and leaned forward. The only sound was the bass squeak of the leather chair.

“Don’t you get it?” he said, softly. “I want to marry you.”

Joe was utterly unable to breathe. He heard a roaring in his ears, which he was positive did not come from the ancient air-conditioning. Emerson’s dark, infinite eyes held onto Joe’s and refused to look away. Eventually, after several moments, or perhaps only a few seconds, Joe broke the gaze.

“We can’t talk about this now, Kent,” he said, shuffling the papers on his desk into precise order.

Emerson blinked once, his already pale visage turning deathly-white, although the set of his jaw was determined.

“I’m not just suggesting it to get around legalities. I wouldn’t do that to you.” His voice was vibrato. “I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I can’t imagine wanting anyone else.”

The throbbing in Joe’s skull felt as though his head was trapped in a vice. He feverishly wished he was elsewhere. He did not want to be having this conversation at this moment, wholly unprepared as he was for the tsunami of thoughts and feelings that were crashing over him. He was not floating in his chair after all, he was drowning.

“Joe?” Emerson prompted. “This isn’t a proposal. Not if you don’t want it to be. Just, please, think about it?”

Joe could find no response.

“For God’s sake, Joe, say something.”

There was a stifling pause.

“You’ll need to make sure your case investigation report is on my desk before the end of the shift.” Joe turned back to the paperwork on his desk, massaging first his temples then the bridge of his nose. Emerson’s whole frame sank in on itself, like a mass fallen from a great height.

“I just don’t think I’m the marrying type,” said Joe, steadfastly refusing to look up.

Emerson’s right hand reached over the divide between them. “You weren’t the relationship type two years ago. Now look at us.”

The fingers on Joe’s hand twitched towards Emerson’s for an instant, then retracted. His face closed, sealing off the turmoil he felt within.

“Make sure the ballistics report is included. That’s going to be pivotal in making the case.”

Thus dismissed, Emerson saw himself out of the office with a mumbled “Yes sir.” Joe’s eyes followed him as he toiled back to his desk.

 

* * *

 

Joe finished relaying the scenario to Miles.

“So you just sent him away?” Miles shook his head.

“What could I do? He took me completely by surprise. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Well, are you?”

Joe gazed helplessly at Miles. “Am I what?”

“Going to think about it.”

“That’s what I am doing, Miles.”

“I don’t just mean coming up with a list of reasons not to. You owe him the respect of considering it properly, not closing yourself off with excuses. He definitely deserves better than how you spoke to him before. Haven’t you thought marrying him might be the best thing that ever happens to you?”

“Of course I have,” snapped Joe. “But I’ve told you. I can’t do it.”

Miles breathed out heavily. Joe could not tell whether it was in frustration or resignation.

“Do you love him?” he asked sternly. He barked a laugh as Joe’s face began to resemble one of the carps in his pond. “No, don’t answer that, it’s obvious you do, even if you’d never admit it. Just do yourself a favour and try thinking of all the reasons why you _should_ do it.”

“What sort of reasons?”

“Well if nothing else, it’d give Judy an excuse to buy a new hat.” Miles’ flippancy signalled that he was running out of patience. “Just don’t be a bloody idiot.”

Both men jumped as a shrill, falsetto clangour resonated throughout the office. Miles recovered first to answer the telephone. Joe rotated his wrist ninety degrees to look at his watch. It had been nearly twenty minutes since Emerson had called.

Miles hung up. “Come on, sir, we’ve got to go. There’s been an incident on Commercial Street. Uniforms are on their way. We’ll be quicker walking there.”

Joe seized his greatcoat from the back of the door and strode after Miles. “What sort of incident?”

“Suspected shooting.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tessa shivered uncontrollably as a paramedic enveloped her in a foil-coated insulating blanket. The covering crackled as it settled around her shoulders, reminding her of the fizzy prosecco she had been drinking only a short while earlier. She was feeling completely sober now. Any residual warmth left from the alcohol had vanished with the shock, making her realise just how underdressed she was for an evening in January. The paramedic, Rob – according to his ID badge, busied himself with checking her pulse and blood pressure, his expression serious but kind. His light brown hair flopped over his forehead, in the style of a nineties boy band star, like the ones Tessa had fancied when she was younger. She wondered whether it would be inappropriate to ask him for his number.

She calmed herself by watching the activity in the street in front of her. Bex and Shaz were standing close by, faces grey, rubbing Lisa’s back and hair as she vomited into the kerb. Two blonde men, one exceptionally tall and well-dressed, were being escorted through the police cordon. The tall man’s gait was graceful yet rigid, much like the wrought-iron ornamental fences enclosing the private parks dotted across the capital.

Finishing his examination, Rob nodded to a female PC a few feet away, who bustled over to Tessa, notebook in hand.

“Alright, love, can you confirm your name and your date of birth for me?”

“Tessa Fredericks, 14th July 1987.”

“Can you go into a bit more detail about what you saw tonight?”

All she had wanted to do that night was do a few shots, dance like a teenager and have one last epic night of hijinks before Lisa’s wedding. Her stomach lurched as she considered how Lisa’s night had been ruined – how she, Tessa, had ruined it. Why had she argued with Janine and charged off alone, so unsteady on her skyscraper heels that Lisa was forced to run after her? She had kept going even when she stumbled after hearing what sounded like a car backfiring.

As she had flamingoed down the street, icy fingers of air covering her in goosebumps, she had become aware of a shadowy movement at the periphery of the road ahead. A bin bag, or something similar, was propped up against a shop wall, which was not unusual except that a hooded figure was aiming violent kick after kick at it. Even in her inebriated state, she had thought that was strange.

“Hey!” she had shouted, removing her shoes in order to sprint towards the person. The assailant slid into a side street, disappearing like a spectre in the blackness.

As she had approached the bundle on the ground, she had realised that it was not shop refuse as she had initially thought, but a man, only slightly older than herself. He lay motionless on the ground, his curly hair compacted with sweat and blood. More blood oozed from beneath his body, like some biblical lake, staining the pavement crimson with its steady exodus. His pale cheek was already discoloured and swollen. As she gaped, horror-struck, at him, everything she saw seemed to stand out clearer than normal, in ultra-high definition – the pattern on the man’s tie, the chewing-gum on the wall behind him, the headphones abandoned at his feet. Finally, Tessa had screamed, her piercing coloratura shattering through the night.

“It was Lisa that phoned 999,” Tessa explained to the police officer, indicating towards her friend, who had thankfully stopped being sick. As if on cue, Lisa’s face was promptly illuminated with a neon light as a chorus of sirens began their refrain, and an ambulance sped away at express speed.

 

* * *

 

The emergency vehicles ahead flashed like a sinister disco as Joe and Miles arrived at the crime scene. Joe had still no word from Emerson, and dread sat heavy in his gut. Mansell and Riley were on their way back in, but Emerson’s phone was ringing out unanswered. The area they were heading for was clearly visible, conspicuous by the congregation of emergency services personnel, their variously coloured hi-vis uniforms creating a swirling pallette in the dim light.

A police sergeant waved them through at the cordon.

“Hello, Dawn, sweetheart,” Miles greeted her. “What’ve we got?”

“Reports of gunshots at about twenty-one fifteen, and a group out on a hen night phoned in a triple nine about an IC1 male who had been viciously attacked. One of them saw the assailant kicking the victim, but didn’t get a look at his face. Preliminary findings are that he was shot, then beaten. Paramedics are stabilising him enough to get him to hospital, then SOCOs are ready to process the scene.”

“Got an ID?” Miles asked.

Dawn bit her lip, and looked at Miles and Joe, her eyes dashing between them uncertainly.

“Yeah, we do.” She finally settled her sorrowful gaze on Joe. “It’s DC Kent.”

Everything went a murky charcoal. Joe collapsed like a broken toy – a marionette with its strings snapped. Whatever power that had enabled him to stand had disappeared, along with his belief that Emerson was safe. From his vantage point on the ground, he could see Emerson’s hand, alabaster white and deathly still. It was the same hand that had brought Joe the chalk when no-one else would. The same hand that had held tightly onto his that first night together. The same hand that had reached in reconciliation over his desk that afternoon. The same hand that he had rejected due to his own cowardice.

The weight in his stomach shifted upwards and he retched. He was dimly aware of Miles’ arm around his shoulder.

“It’s okay, sir, let it out.”

Miles was crouched down beside him, comforting sounds emanating from his mouth.

“He’ll be alright. He’s gonna be alright.”

Joe was not entirely sure whether Miles was trying to console his boss or himself. A drop of water fell onto his palm, warmer than rain.

_But Miles never cries,_ he thought.

A harsh rattling drew his attention. A black stretcher was being rolled towards Emerson’s wounded form, tubes and machinery hanging from it like the Christmas decorations they had taken down only two weeks earlier. The decorations had been Emerson’s idea, though only Joe was tall enough to place the star on top of the tree.

His nausea abated, Joe scrambled to his feet, shaking Miles away. Emerson was being lifted onto the stretcher and hurried towards the waiting ambulance. He looked like one of the bodies in Caroline Llewellyn’s morgue. Joe dug his fingernails into his palms, drawing blood, in an attempt to arrest such negative thoughts, and hastened over to Emerson. Impulsively, he threw himself over his partner’s chest, grasping at his collar, his face, his hair. His usually silky curls were stiff and clay-like.

“Emerson, God, please…!” he choked, as rough, impatient hands pulled him away.

“Out of the way. We need to get this man to hospital ASAP.”

“Come on, sir,” coaxed Miles. “Let them do their job. Besides, if you’re not careful, you’ll contaminate evidence.”

“I’m not leaving him, Miles.”

“I know, but standing there wringing your hands isn’t going to help him now, is it?”

Joe had always found the phrase ‘hand-wringing’ to bear little relation to how people really react in a crisis. He felt it was more a comedic device, like something found in a ‘Carry On’ film, or a shorthand for panic by a lazy writer. However, it was the only word that fully described the hysterical shaking in his arms, and the knotting and unknotting of his fingers. Wringing. Perhaps more accurately, he was the one being wrung out, as though through a mangle, leaving him both hollow and flat, with everything of substance squeezed out of him. Like a broken record, Joe’s mind fixated pointlessly: _He’s wringing his hands, he wrung his hands, his hands were wringing._

Before he could begin to conjugate the verb in his head, he shook himself and said again, to Miles, to the paramedics, “I mean it. I’m not leaving him. I’m not, I refuse. It’s my _right_. He’s my…”

Emerson’s earlier, now prophetic words flooded into Joe’s memory: _If something happened to one of us, we wouldn’t have any legal rights. You’re not my next of kin in the eyes of the law_.

Joe tailed off, feebly. “He’s my DC.”

Miles flicked a glance at the paramedic in charge, about to secure Emerson within the ambulance, who nodded briskly.

“Come on in, then,” she said. “Quickly. We’ve not got time to hang about.”

 

* * *

 

Not quite an hour later, Joe was pacing between the four walls of the relatives’ room at the Royal London Hospital’s Emergency Department. Emerson was somewhere else in the hospital, but whether he was alive or dead Joe had no idea. Their arrival had been a cacophony of shouting, electronic beeping and buzzing as Emerson was propelled into Resus, medics kneading his chest. His heart had stopped. His heart had stopped twice in the ambulance. That heart which Emerson had gladly given over to Joe had ceased to beat, and Joe had felt his own falter alongside it.

Arrested, that was the medical term for it. The word had a grim irony about it – in their line of work, usually arrests were a good thing. Now, Joe would have gladly exchanged all of them to have prevented this.

Watching them struggle to resuscitate Emerson, Joe had felt so helpless, so out of control. The waiting only made it worse. He knew that the first hour after a trauma patient was brought in was critical, and that hour was nearly up. A nurse had brought him a cup of over-stewed tea thirty minutes earlier, but since then, he had seen no-one. Alone, Joe could not prevent his brain from taking over. His head was being invaded by an impatient gremlin, who appeared to be excavating all of his thoughts and feelings, throwing them into the air and catching them at random.

_Why Emerson? How can I save him? Please, God, save him. Why is no-one telling me anything? If he were dead, I’d know, wouldn’t I? I’d feel it in my stomach, my lungs, my heart. My vital organs – life-giving organs. Emerson, forgive me. Hate me. He’s going to die, it’s my punishment. He looked so small. This room is too small. Like a coffin. No, not a coffin, please not a coffin. Shut up in a box. Shut up, shut up, shut up._

Joe pounded his head with the flats of his hands, in a vain attempt to dam the flow of his subconscious. He had always been an introspective man, prone to over-thinking, but this was beyond anything he had experienced before. Even during his worst cases, the Krays and the Abrahamians for example, he had maintained some composure, aside from counting drawing pins and smashing light fittings. But there, in that hospital, on that night, he could not even command his own mind. If he could not control himself, how could he possibly control external forces?

Spotting a pile of magazines on the short-legged table, Joe strode towards them forcefully, hoping that there was something worth reading in them. He needed something to distract his menacing thoughts. To his repugnance, the offerings were a bland selection of lifestyle and celebrity gossip. Had he been fascinated with the way footballers’ wives decorated their living rooms, or where such-and-such a singer had holidayed, he might have found the diversion he needed. As it was, he slapped the top edition violently onto its neighbours, almost taking satisfaction in the solid, smacking sound it made. It moved with such velocity that it slithered off the pile onto the linoleum floor, taking several other issues with it. Joe groaned in exhausted frustration and reached down to retrieve them. He began to replace them, sorting each separate publication into alphabetical order – Closer, Country Life, Esquire, Hello, OK. He felt a ripple of something approaching calm run through him as he straightened the magazines square with the lines of the table.

 

* * *

 

Emerson had caught Joe reorganising the bookshelves two days after he had moved in. It was a cool evening at the end of September, the time of year when people across London were debating whether to turn on their heating, or whether they should simply put on extra layers. Joe had settled for wearing a knitted maroon cardigan. He was in the living room listening to Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata in D minor on the record player while Emerson was having a shower. He frowned accusingly at the taciturn bookcase, before taking an armful of books from the shelf. He didn’t hear Emerson enter the room.

“What are you doing?” Emerson asked, his hair glistening like freshly brewed coffee and skin pink from the hot water. A bemused smile curled the corners of his mouth. He wore a white towel around his waist, leaving his upper body bare, donning an appearance midway between coy and seductive. Joe had been thankful to discover that, contrary to whatever Mansell and Riley might imagine, Emerson had no tattoos upon his chest, of Joe’s face or otherwise. He did have a small phoenix etched onto his upper thigh, a fact that Joe was content to keep between the two of them.

Joe’s landlord had decided, at the end of his lease, to sell the two-bedroom balcony flat that he was renting. Joe had never put much faith in bricks and mortar, but he had grown quite attached to his apartment, particularly since Emerson had started to spend a lot more time there. It was the small familiar touches that made it – the artwork Emerson had put up to brighten the walls, the woollen blanket draped over the back of the sofa, the curtains in his bedroom they had chosen together (a shopping trip Joe would never have thought he would make with another human being.) It was nothing that could not, by necessity, be transferred elsewhere, but in this apartment, with Emerson, it felt like home. Not to mention that the building had the best maintained and cleanest lifts Joe had ever seen. So when his landlord offered him first refusal to buy the flat, it had made perfect sense for Joe to put in an offer.

He had taken some persuading, however, when Emerson suggested that they bought the flat together. They had been together for over a year by then, Emerson slowly insinuating himself into Joe’s life until his presence was as natural as a cup of tea in the morning and a soft pillow at night. Emerson stayed there nine nights out of ten, at first in the spare room then, later, in Joe’s bed. Small clues to his existence had begun to materialise – the spare toothbrush and toothpaste taking up residence in the bathroom, the instant coffee in the kitchen cupboard, the suit in a size far too small for Joe hung up in the bedroom. Joe found he did not mind these minute encroachments. He was in fact astounded to discover that he welcomed them. However, the wholesale alliance of Emerson’s life, identity and belongings with Joe’s own was another thing altogether. How would Emerson’s tastes cohabit with Joe’s, his preference for indie rock compared to Joe’s symphonies and string quartets?

Yet there they were, putting the final touches on their new life together, and standing in an apartment that they both owned. The sonata was entering the development section, and Joe’s stomach was churning with a mixture of ecstatic happiness and utter panic.

“I’ve already put pretty much everything away, Joe. There’s nothing else to do now,” Emerson said, tilting his body towards Joe.

“Your books,” grunted Joe. “They aren’t in the right places.”

Emerson furrowed his brow. “They’re on the bookcase. Where else are they supposed to go?”

“They’re not logical. You’ve got Wilkie Collins next to Paul Torday, and ‘Persuasion’ in the middle of all your Discworld books.” Against his will, Joe felt himself tensing, his knuckles spasming and turning white.

“I haven’t had a chance to sort through them yet, Joe. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Emerson draped his arm around Joe’s waist, easing the taller man towards him. Joe shook him off with a rough shrug.

“It’s fine,” he said, irritably. “I’d rather do it now.”

Emerson’s face took on a petulant air. “Maybe I’ve got my own system.”

“Well, if you do, it makes no sense. They need to be alphabetised by genre, otherwise it’s just chaos.”

“Surely we can leave it till later?”

“It’s making me… uncomfortable.” Joe’s wrists vibrated erratically.

“For God’s sake, Joe, it’s not the end of the world!” Emerson snapped.

“I’m just coping with all the new changes in my own way.”

The gramophone sounded a distorted screech as Emerson yanked the needle.

“Tell you what, shall I just put all my stuff in the loft, then you don’t have to cope with it at all?”

“Don’t be irrational, Emerson.”

“Me, irrational? I’m not the one who needs to control every tiny bloody thing otherwise I have a melt-down. Some things you just can’t control and you’re just going to have to learn to live with it.” Emerson’s voice had risen several semitones in anger.

“I’m learning to live with you, aren’t I?”

The silence that followed was like a dead thing. When Emerson spoke again, his tone was back to its usual timbre, but void of being.

“You do what you like. I’m going to bed.” Emerson stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. The sound resonated through the flat, a discordant boom mimicking the rumbling cello that had been silenced.

Joe sank onto the sofa, hurt and remorse lurching through his veins, promptly followed by half a bottle of premium vodka.

 

* * *

 

That same remorse coursed through Joe as he sat, inert, remembering that argument, their first proper one. They had kissed and made up the same evening, after they had both calmed down and Joe’s self-medication had taken effect, but Joe was still pained at how he had rejected Emerson at the slightest onslaught of stress.

_If only I didn’t keep pushing him away…_

He signed in resignation, and began to reorganise the magazines by date. Some of them went back several years. One was dated August 2008, which Joe realised with a jerk was the same month that he had first came to Whitechapel, when he had first met Emerson Kent. They had both been so different then – Kent (he had only been Kent, at that point) crumpled in jeans and zip-up waterproof, Joe upright in his dinner jacket and ambition. They were so innocent, untouched by what was to come. Joe recalled the young officer’s glance of swiftly stifled fascinated awe at Joe’s get-up, before he had turned back to comfort and question the witness. Mary Bousfield, the PCSO, had ended up being the Ripper’s fourth victim. In fact, looking back, Joe realised that almost everyone he had met that night had become a victim in some way or another. Miles had been stabbed, Emerson had been striped, McCormack had hung himself. And now Emerson again. All their cases, every crime, every death, were like creatures caught in the whirlpool that centred on Joe’s arrival in Whitechapel. Joe now wished he had pushed Emerson away harder, away from the swirling water. He would have been better off staying far away from Joe. They would all have been better off.

_I couldn’t stop it. What sort of a DI am I if I can’t protect my team? What sort of a man am I if I can’t protect Emerson?_

His mind in spirals, the vast burden of the past oppressed Joe, threatening to overwhelm him.

A sub-heading on the front of the publication startled Joe out of his brooding:

‘GET RIPPED THIS SUMMER.’

For a split second, Joe thought that this had been a crucial piece of evidence they had missed all those years ago, until he realised it was just referring to an article on bodybuilding. His attention drawn back to the magazine, Joe swallowed a wave of revulsion as he calculated how many other people had probably fingered the flimsy pages. They were in hospital, so there was no guarantee that his predecessors had been healthy. He understood why it was that Emerson did not like hospitals.

He stood up, noting with distaste the stickiness of the floor beneath his feet. It was typical institutional flooring, commendable for its practicality rather than its aesthetics. The glittering specks dotted like sand in the linoleum appeared to be scattered randomly at first glance, but on closer inspection created an infinitely repeating pattern.

As Joe straightened his cuffs, he felt a rough gritty texture on his shirtsleeves, and had a sudden horrendous realisation that he was covered with mud and blood – his own united with Emerson’s. A red-hot prickling crawled up his back – his familiar reaction to the grime of a crime scene, previously submerged by his worry, was beginning to arise and engulf him. He felt a sudden need to wash.

 

* * *

 

Joe stared at the hot water dancing from the taps. The unnatural white beam from the strip-lighting above his head bounced off the liquid and rippled on the wall facing him. It had not taken him long to track down the nearest gents and locate some anti-bacterial soap. His shirt and jacket were massed at his feet, crimson-stained and sodden on the damp floor. Joe knew he would never be able to wear those again.

The door behind him scraped open.

“I thought I might find you in here.” Miles stood in the doorway, brandishing a purple suit-carrier. His face sagged with fatigue, the inch of skin under each of his eyes distended, swollen and grey.

“I brought you some fresh clothes.”

Joe’s eyes widened.

“Don’t worry, I’ve not been in your flat. It’s the spare set you keep in your office that you think I don’t know about.”

Joe’s throat had grown hoarse through disuse. “Thank you,” he coughed, reaching for the coat hanger.

“Right, you get yourself cleaned up and come back out. The whole team’s here to see how you’re doing.”

Refreshed somewhat, Joe returned to the relatives’ room a few minutes later. Sat uneasily around the room, like mourners at a wake, were Miles, Riley, Erica and Mansell, faces pale and eyes bloodshot. Another police officer whom Joe recognised slightly was also present, standing pendulously in a corner. As Joe approached, he extended his right arm inelegantly.

Before either of them could speak, a knock at the door made all of the officers start.

A short, middle-aged woman in scrubs entered, her black bushy hair tamed and scraped back against her scalp.

“Excuse me, I’m Mrs Handel, the trauma consultant treating Emerson Kent. I thought you’d like an update on his condition.”

 

 

                                                                                                        


	3. Chapter 3

For a calcified moment, the only sound in the stagnant waiting room was the ticking of the clock on the wall. Joe threw the device a horrified look – the kind he usually reserved for concert-goers who applauded in between movements or rustled sweet wrappers during pianissimo sections. Undaunted, the clock pulsed obstinately on. It was almost eleven o’clock, nearly tomorrow. What sort of tomorrow it would be, Joe could not guess.

The surgeon, Mrs Handel, slowly eased the door shut, cushioning the catch into alignment. She had evidently undergone a lot of training in dealing with relatives of her patients. Joe had a sudden violent impulse to grab the handle from her practised fingers and slam it loudly.

“Emerson Kent was brought in just over an hour ago with multiple injuries,” Mrs Handel began. “He had two gunshot wounds – one to the stomach and another which pierced his lung. We managed to extract the bullets and stop the internal bleeding, and we’ve put him on a ventilator to help with his breathing. That’s the good news.”

There was an audible release of pressure throughout the small room, which proved to be premature.

“However, added to that, he has a very nasty head injury and he’s lost a lot of blood. We’re not going to know fully what damage has been done until we can stabilise him enough to get him a CT scan. If he survives the next twelve to fifteen hours…”

The clock’s disinterested beat had crescendoed into deafening booms, drowning out the surgeon’s words. It sounded like the crack of doom. Joe felt an irrational yet virulent hatred for the clock, the room and everyone in it.

“So you’re going to do nothing for twelve hours and, what, just pray?” spat Joe.

“Sir!” Mansell’s shocked voice interrupted Joe’s exhilarated anger. Erica had bowed her head and burrowed herself into Mansell’s side, a damp blossoming appearing where her face met his blue shirt. Joe had never appreciated until then just how much she looked like Emerson.

“Are you the gentleman who accompanied Mr Kent in the ambulance?” Mrs Handel asked, her dark eyes a veneer of professional empathy.

Joe nodded.

“I understand that you’re upset, but please believe that we are doing everything we can. Your friend is receiving the best possible care and I assure you that we are doing a great deal more for him than praying. Though, if prayer would help you, I can have someone show you to the chapel.”

Joe knew that she was trying to help, but his spiteful rancour had not yet fully abated.

“The last thing I need is a fucking chapel.”

“Alright, Joe, calm down.” Miles’ soothing tone complemented his gentle hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s time we all got some rest.”

He began to usher everyone out of the relatives’ room with a soft sweep of his arm. Ever Joe’s guardian, he made sure to obtain Joe’s spare keys so he could bring him an overnight bag and spare clothes. He did not try to persuade Joe to go home.

“I’ll come and see how you’re doing later, alright?”

Joe felt his rage wash away as his friend stood by him. Into its place flooded a wringing feeling of guilt.

“Don’t hug me,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to,” Miles raised an eyebrow, before exiting with a squeeze of Joe’s upper arm.

As he passed, the new police officer paused by Joe, offering his hand in greeting once again. He spoke with a deep, resonant bass, round and portly. His shirt gaped across his extensive middle while his bottle-green jacket sagged flaccidly off his shoulders.

“DCI Pembroke. I’m so very sorry about your constable. I’ll be leading the inquiry into his murd… sorry, _attempted_ murder, in your absence. I’m looking forward to working with your team – I’m sure we’ll all become great chums and get the result we want.”

Joe gave a cursory nod in acknowledgement, not trusting himself to speak. DCI Pembroke wobbled out awkwardly.

Mansell kissed Erica as he too left the room. Joe felt slightly sickened watching the two of them embrace. It was not his usual aversion to public displays of affection that bothered him, however, but a vast emptiness and wanting. He felt his lack of Emerson beside him like an orchestra would miss its conductor. He needed Emerson to give his life shape; without him, he was completely bereft of direction. The metronome rhythm of the clock was a poor substitution.

Once the door closed for the final time, Joe and Erica were left alone, together yet divided in their grief. Erica sat mutely, a harsh set to her jaw, sour as vinegar, bitter as gall. Joe found himself unable to look at anything other than the floor. He counted the speckles on the lino in time with each tick, still trapped in his head marking the incremental passing of time. With each second, Emerson was closer to recovery, or the alternative.

“I bet you’re relieved, aren’t you?” The intonation of Erica’s voice was remarkably similar to Emerson’s, causing Joe’s head to jerk upwards.

“Excuse me, what?”

“I expect you’re feeling a bit relieved. It gets you out of a really awkward conversation, after all.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on. Em told me all about your discussion earlier. About getting married? How you basically told him to get stuffed, Mr Prim-and-Proper Detective Inspector. You’re probably glad to have an excuse not to talk about it.”

A sharp pain stabbed through Joe’s chest.

“Nothing, _nothing_ about this makes me glad,” he strained to speak. “How dare you assume…?”

“Oh sure, you’re good at all the guilt and righteous indignation. Saves you from having to talk about how you really feel.”

Joe had always felt a little intimidated by Erica. She was Emerson’s twin sister – she had shared everything with him, from the womb onwards, and they had a bond that no-one could come close to. She seemed to have taken on the role of Emerson’s protector, particularly since the Krays case.

Joe had a sudden flashback to Erica standing in the middle of the Incident Room, the day after Joe had suspended Emerson.

“How could you treat him like that,” she had shouted, eyes flashing, “when he’s been nothing but loyal and supportive to you? He got injured because of you. Came back to work far too early ‘cause he wanted to help you close the case. And you… you disgust me DI Chandler. ”

Joe had tried to explain that he was simply following procedure, that he had not wanted to suspend Kent, that it had in fact caused him great pain to think that he could have betrayed him.

“I don’t want to hear it.” Erica had spun around forcefully, picking up a small box of Emerson’s personal belongings that he had been unable to carry out himself. “I need to go. Emerson needs my help to have a shower.”

Joe, thunderstruck, had watched her storm out of the office, trying desperately to ignore the unbidden vision of Kent in the shower that had arisen in his mind.

Erica looked at Joe furiously as a maternal swan might regard a gander encircling her young. Joe desperately wanted to prove to her that he could be trusted with her brother’s affections, a feat he had evidently yet to accomplish.

“You can’t possibly know how I feel,” Joe retorted.

“No, and nor does Emerson. You never let him in. You’ve never been close to anyone in your life!”

“I do let him in.” Joe felt a twinge of self-directed anger at the whining tenor his voice had taken. “I care very deeply for your brother.”

Joe thought he saw something soften in Erica’s expression, although that might have been wishful thinking. The bitterness in her mouth had perhaps sweetened a little, though not enough to relieve the severity in her eyes.

“Have you ever told him?”

“Yes… of course I have…” Joe spluttered. “I mean… I don’t need to… he knows how I feel.” “Are you sure about that?”

Joe was silent for a moment. “I gave him a poem. He understood.”

Erica heaved out a joyless laugh. “A poem! What sort of pathetic gesture is that? I think Emerson deserves more than a bit of ‘Roses are red, violets are blue’ crap.”

Erica’s face, her expression, her turns of phrase all combined in a thoroughly Emerson-like presentation. However Joe found this only served to highlight how much she was _not_ Emerson. It was like looking at a portrait, an exceptional portrait brimming with the vitality of the subject, so realistic that you reach out to take the subject’s hand, only to be met by cold, unresponsive canvas.

Emerson _had_ understood, Joe knew he had, unlike this imitation copy sat in front of him.

_But what if he didn’t understand? Can he really not know? Am I guilty of not doing enough?_

The clock’s ticking was now a judge’s gavel, beating out a verdict. _Guilty, guilty, guilty._

Erica was right about one thing though. Joe did guilt very well. It had become his closest companion throughout his years in Whitechapel, until Emerson had helped him blow it away a small distance. It still hovered in the periphery, nudging him occasionally, reminding him not to forget the Ripper, his other botched arrests, Josie Eagle, Morgan Lamb.

He realised that Erica was giving him an appraising look, not altogether unfriendly.

“Look,” she sighed. “I like you, Joe, despite appearances to the contrary. And Emerson worships the ground you walk on. But seriously, he needs something more substantial than sonnets and songs, especially now.”

Joe attempted a deep breath to settle his seething emotions, but the inhalation met with resistance. The air made its way into his lungs slowly through a maze of gasps and sobs.

“I know he does. It’s just… it’s really difficult for me.” He dared to look at Erica, hoping to meet some comprehension. Erica’s face darkened. Obviously not.

“For Christ’s sake, if that’s the best you can do, why are you even here?”

“Because… I need him. I lo…” But the words refused to emerge further, stubbornly remaining stuck in his gullet.

He slammed his fists against his thighs once, twice, three times in frustration. The ache thus created came nowhere near to the dreadful hurt in his core. Something was blocked deep inside of him and Joe had not the tools to release it.

Emerson had spoken to Erica about it. He had evidently been bothered enough by Joe’s behaviour, or lack of it, to confide in a third party, to seek advice, consolation, support. Joe was not sure what was worse: that Emerson might never have realised the depth of Joe’s feelings, or that he might not live long enough for Joe to make them explicit. If indeed he found the ability to be explicit.

Joe stood. “I need some air.”

There was a dampness to the night that could not be solely attributed to the mist that still clung to the hospital car park. Joe craned his neck up to look at the sky, to where he knew he would be able to see the constellation of Orion, if not for the grimy London illumination polluting the heavens. Emerson had impressed him a few weeks earlier with his previously undisclosed knowledge of astronomy, demonstrated while they watched a TV quiz show together.

_There’s still so much about him that I don’t know, and so much I need to tell him._

A tiny drip of wetness bounced upon his forehead. It was starting to rain.

 

* * *

 

A Whitechapel downpour always seemed to be wetter than anywhere else, the moisture soaking through and settling in every crevice. The dust and detritus of the thousands of people daily tramping through the district formed a thin slurry on the pavements, and the gutters roared with rushing water racing down the drains. Dickensian weather, Joe liked to call it. Woe betide anyone who was caught outside without waterproofs.

It had been just such an evening in February, not quite a year earlier, when Joe heard an insistent knocking on his door. As he clicked down the latch, the opening doorway revealed the sodden figure of a man dripping in the hall. He was completely soaked through, his suit saturated. His shirt and trousers cleaved suggestively to his body, while his jacket sagged off his shoulders, wet and lifeless. He reminded Joe of nothing quite so much as a human washing line, except that washing lines did not usually have chattering teeth.

“Emerson. I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”

“I know, I know. But my stupid bike broke down, and then it started to rain, and I realised I didn’t have a coat, and well… can I come in and dry off?”

Joe swung himself backwards to allow Emerson room to enter the flat. He peeled Emerson’s jacket from his body and placed it over the radiator. Water vapour immediately hissed into the air, fogging up the nearby mirror like smog.

“You’re wearing odd socks,” Joe observed, looking at Emerson’s feet, now extracted from his once-shiny black leather shoes.

Emerson’s lips twisted with half-hearted apology, before his whole face pursed up in a violent sneeze.

“Go on,” Joe ordered. “Shower. Now. I’ll find you something dry to wear.”

Twenty minutes later, a distinctly warmer, though still slightly damp, Emerson was sat at Joe’s kitchen table. He was bundled up like a parcel in pyjamas and one of Joe’s dressing-gowns.

Joe placed a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of him.

Emerson blinked. “I never had you down as a hot chocolate sort of man,” he said questioningly.

“I’m not really,” replied Joe. “It’s a very particular brand. It’s got camomile in it. I save it for special occasions… or special people.” Realising what he had just let slip, he reddened and dropped his gaze to the counter.

Emerson’s hand rested itself on top of Joe’s. It was warm.

“Oh bloody hell, I love you,” he blurted out.

Startled, Joe looked up. “Do you?” He had not meant to sound as surprised as he did.

“Um… well, yeah I do,” Emerson said, tentatively. He withdrew his hand and ran it tensely through his hair. “Shit, I didn’t mean to tell you like that.”

Joe’s mouth performed a half-smile while the corners of his eyes wrinkled. “It’s not the first time, actually.”

“What?”

“You’ve said it before.”

“When?” “After Mansell’s wedding to Eva. You were half asleep and barely able to stand so I drove you home. Do you really not remember?”

Emerson rubbed his forehead as though trying to massage his memories to the front of his head.

“I remember the headache the next morning,” he grimaced. “Did I completely embarrass myself?”

“No, not at all. In fact, you were relatively dignified in your drunkenness. I walked you to your door, and your flatmate, Ella?...”

“Ailsa,” Emerson corrected.

“Yes, Ailsa. She was up, so she took care of you from there. I wished you good night, and as I turned to leave, you mumbled ‘Love you, sir’ before apparently falling upstairs.”

Joe observed the look of mild dismay mixed with shame blooming on Emerson’s face.

“Don’t worry,” he said quickly, “I didn’t mind. It was quite sweet really. To be honest, I didn’t think any more of it until months later, when… things started to make more sense.”

Emerson stood and stepped closer to Joe, all awkwardness evaporated.

“Well, what can I say? It was true then, and it’s even more true now.” He swallowed loudly. “I love you, Joseph Chandler. I pretty much always have.”

Adrenaline pounded through Joe, a need as relentless and adamant as Emerson’s rapping at his door had been. The arrival that started this encounter. Of all the things Joe had expected to have been doing that evening, standing nose to nose with Emerson, so close he could feel his breath on his mouth, listening to declarations of love from the man who had rapidly become the most important thing in his life, had not even factored as a possibility. He was glad to have been proved wrong, at least he thought he was.

_I’m supposed to say it back, aren’t I? Does it have to be in those exact words? ‘Ditto’ was a perfectly adequate response in that awful film he made me watch the other night._

He could say it. He would say it. It was only a tiny little word, surely much less intimidating than other four-letter words he could name.

“Emerson, I… I l…”

_For heaven’s sake, just say it._

“I… had better check you’ve turned the shower off properly. It gets a bit stuck sometimes.”

Joe turned and fled, bile ascending through his body in a sickening torrent.

Emerson had, in fact, done a stellar job at shutting down the flow of water in the shower. There was a knack to it, but he had used it enough times to have become expert at manoeuvring around its idiosyncrasies. Still overcome by adrenaline, Joe’s pulse was racing and his hands shook as he began to fill the sink from the taps. Adrenaline – the fight or flight hormone. In Joe’s case, it most often manifested itself in flight, with the odd exception, such as when he had challenged Jimmy Kray to a boxing match. He wished he could find something between the two – neither fear nor aggression. He supposed that was what love was, the harmonious equilibrium. A slight discordancy on either side and it would pivot and tumble, but when it was there, balanced, all it needed was constancy. Like the planets orbiting the sun, it could not fall if everything was in alignment. All Joe needed to do was not panic. But panicking was something he was very good at. He should put it on his CV.

He bent down and submerged his face into the lukewarm water. A few heartbeats’ time underwater was enough to be unpleasantly reminiscent of drowning, and Joe surfaced, lurching backwards and gasping. Emerson was standing in the doorway.

“Joe? Are you okay?”

Joe looked at him, expecting to see disappointment or even anger etched in his features. But Emerson’s sole expression was a tender concern.

“I don’t know what I am,” Joe answered faintly. “I’m so sorry, Emerson.”

Emerson’s bare feet, already pointing themselves towards Joe, took a step closer. In concord, his arms rose forty-five degrees, enclosing Joe’s body within them.

“It’s alright, you know. You don’t need to say it just because I have.”

Joe fingered his temples. “No it’s not alright. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Emerson… Em… what you said, I _do_ , I really do. But I just can’t form the words. It won’t… come out.”

He sank into the side of the bathtub, his face a mask of anguish.

Emerson followed him down, crouching in front of him, making himself a mirror image. They became like two halves of a compass. Like a duet where both soloists sing as one. The rain outside pummelled the windows, sounding like applause from a thousand hands. As though bowing to the ovation, Emerson leant forward and gently laid his mouth over Joe’s. Joe could taste the remnants of hot chocolate on his lips. The warmth that emanated from them melted his desperation, and he slowly placed his hands on Emerson’s hips, grasping him, dragging him ever closer.

His anxiety could not remain at bay forever, though. Anxiety, fear, worry – they all had frequent flyer points in Joe’s head. They lay in bed together that night, Joe awake staring at the ceiling, Emerson asleep, his head nestled on Joe’s breastbone. His mind was once again active, swirling like the water he had released down the plughole. Emerson was in a deep slumber – Joe could tell by the depth and pace of his languorous breathing. So peaceful, so calm, so utterly content in his surroundings. Joe could not quite believe that Emerson had such faith in him, that he could possess such profound feelings for him.

He arched his neck to drop a chaste kiss onto Emerson’s forehead. Emerson wrinkled his nose in his sleep and burrowed more tightly into Joe’s side.

_What did I ever do to deserve him?_

He sighed as his mind, perversely and against his will, flipped the question onto its head.

_What has Emerson done to deserve such an old fool as me? He should be with someone who would shout from the rooftops how much they love him. Not me, so crippled with… whatever it is… that I can barely whisper it to myself._

Those three little words. Other people said them all the time, tenderly, passionately, even flippantly. Why could he not say them at all?

 

* * *

 

Joe felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Joe?” Erica was standing behind him, silhouetted in the yellow light of the hospital. A warm forgiveness enlightened the shadows upon her face. “The doctor’s just been back. They said we can go and see Em if we want. You coming?”


	4. Chapter 4

The Incident Room was heavy and suffocating when Miles arrived, an hour and a half early, the next morning. He had not slept well and had decided he would be of more use at work than sat at home counting sheep. Judging by the coats already festooned over the chairs at Riley and Mansell’s desks, he was not the only one. The office where he had worked for more years than he cared to remember had taken on an unfamiliar edge overnight. The air lay thick, as though all breath had been sucked from it. It reminded Miles of the subdued London streets after a heavy snowfall, except without the magical gloss. Screwed-up pieces of paper lay like miniature snowballs on almost every surface. A crushed paper aeroplane lay on the floor near to Kent’s chair. Normally, either the Boss or Kent would have tidied up the night before; the evidence of their inability to have done so lay strewn about the room. The comparative neatness of Kent’s desk stood out in sharp relief, an almost threatening presence.

Against the side wall, glowering towards the vacant space where Kent would normally position himself, stood three whiteboards, wiped clear of all previous cases. They stood primed, aggressive in their emptiness, as though daring Miles to write upon them. He did not feel the usual rush he had at the beginning of a case, anticipating filling the blank space with data and leads. Rather, the nearly bare whiteboards appeared sinister, intransigent and void. Someone had blu-tacked a photo of Kent to the central panel. In Miles’ opinion, it did not live up to usual CID standards of evidence-gathering - it was obviously a print-out from a mobile phone, Riley’s at a guess. Kent’s face was pixelated in the murky light, blurring the edges of his sharp features, the clearest part of the image being the startling amount of red-eye. Part of his face was so fuzzy that his pallid complexion was replaced by a mixture of blue, green and red splodges, as though he had been on the receiving end of a second-rate face painter. The photo had been taken at the last Christmas party. Miles remembered the snowman tie that Kent had donned for the occasion, which provided the only source of lightness in the entire picture. Miles stifled a half-hearted chuckle as he recalled Joe’s face when Kent had swapped his usual sober tie for the novelty one. Picture-Kent faced outwards, laughing, his gaze fixed ever so slightly to the left of the camera. He held a partially-finished bottle of nondescript lager (rat’s piss, as Miles would call it) in his hand. At the very edge of the photograph, nearly out of shot, stood Joe, clearly looking directly at him. To anyone who did not know them, the image would appear perfectly innocent, but there was something in the almost proprietary look on Joe’s face that suggested otherwise to a more familiar eye.

A high-pitched ping drew Miles’ attention back to the present, a subito reminder of why Kent’s photo was stuck on the board in the first place. Miles plodded over to his own desk to read the incoming email.

_To:                   DS.R.Miles@met.police.uk_

_From:               georginahandel.ed@bartshealth.nhs.uk_

_Subject:            Medical Report ED220116/EK_

He swiftly opened the attachment and printed the surgeon’s report of Kent’s injuries, before forwarding it to Caroline Llewellyn. SOCO had already been sent the bullets retrieved from within Kent. Miles hoped that by lunchtime they would have some forensics to work with and he could begin to attack the tyranny of the blank whiteboards with black marker pen.

“Morning, Sarge.”

The glass doors of the Incident Room opened, pushed inwards by Riley and Mansell. They each carried a paper cup in their hands. Riley’s would contain a latte, or the nearest approximation to one the station canteen could manage, while Mansell typically stuck to builders’ tea. Their entrance, too, echoed their normal morning routine, but with a discordant note, like an chord declaimed on organ pipes, which had ceased to sound but carried on a semitone lower in the unfriendly acoustic. There would usually be a goodly amount of banter in the minutes before shift started, but the atmosphere this morning was subdued, broken.

Miles looked up at his two colleagues. Even a casual observer would note that something was wrong – Riley’s mouth hovered on the edge of tears and Mansell’s face had taken on a similar shade to wet concrete.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” asked Miles.

“Not a lot,” grunted Mansell. “Erica didn’t get home ‘til the early hours. She’d left the Boss at the hospital with Kent. They got in to see him a bit after we left.”

“Is there any news?” asked Riley.

Mansell pulled a face. “Not looking great at the moment,” he replied. “Bit of a waiting game, I think. They’re keeping him… whad’ya call it… sedated. Should do him some good, he’s such a perky sod the rest of the time.”

His feeble attempt at a joke fell flat, but Miles and Riley attempted wan smiles anyway. Miles placed a paternal hand on Mansell’s left shoulder.

“Are you sure you want to be here?” he asked, kindly. “If you need to be at home with Erica…?”

“Nah, you’re alright Skip,” said Mansell. “Her mum arrived as I left. Reckon I’m better off here for now.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Miles drew himself up an inch higher, entering into Detective Sergeant mode. He was uncomfortably aware that he needed to lead the team – it would take some time for the DCI to get settled in. It felt deficient and lacking without Joe at the helm. Of course, he had managed fine before Joe’s arrival in Whitechapel, but that had been seven, nearly _eight_ years ago, and they had never had to investigate the attempted murder of one of their own.

“Right, we all want a result and to get the bastard who did this,” he pronounced. Riley and Mansell nodded in affirmation. “So let’s get on and do Kent and the Boss proud. Mansell, you make sure we’ve got all the witness statements. Where are we with CCTV?”

“I’m on it,” answered Riley. “I spoke to the owner of the shop on Commercial Street where Kent was found. He’s got a camera over the door – it should show the whole attack. Mr Patel’s going to have the tape ready for me to pick up any minute.”

“Excellent. Good girl. See if you can pick up anything from further down the road as well. It might give us an idea of where the attacker came from.”

Miles sighed in trepidation. He had the uneasy feeling that Kent’s photo was watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake, to miss something that Joe would have picked up on immediately.

_Gimme a chance. I’m gonna do my damnedest for you, kid._

“Ok, you two know what you’ve got to get on with. DCI Pembroke’ll be in for nine o’clock and my guess is he’ll want a full update of where we’ve got to. Let’s try and have something to give him, yeah?”

“About that, Skip.” Mansell shifted his weight between his legs, left to right to left. He swayed quasi-drunkenly, almost losing his balance. “Why have we been sent a DCI anyway?”

Miles could understand his scepticism. The last time they had had an unfamiliar senior officer about, it had been DI Norroy, and team morale had taken a battering. A new face to take the Boss’ place seemed almost like an insult.

“He’s here to lead the investigation while the Boss is off on compassionate leave. We’ll need the help.”

“Yeah, but what’s he like?” asked Riley earnestly. “Do you know him?”

“I know him a bit. He’s a decent sort really – got a bit of a case of foot in mouth disease at times, but he’s alright. And he’ll be an impartial pair of eyes. Them upstairs wanted to take us off the case altogether, but I managed to talk them round. Which brings me onto another thing. Kent is our friend and colleague, and the Boss is... well, he’s the Boss, but we’ve got to treat this case like any other. We can’t afford to get bogged down with our personal feelings.”

That would be easier said than done. It was funny really, such a disparate group of people to have formed such a tight bond. Eventually, anyway. But the five of them, six if he counted Buchan, had been through a lot together. They had not always gotten along, that feud between Kent and Mansell over Kent’s sister was a prime example, yet together they had survived enough pressure, storm and heat to have melded them into something unbreakable. Like granite, or steel. A team forged in fire. Kent and Mansell were practically family now. Miles and Joe too were as different as wood and wire, but you put those materials together and with enough patience and time, you can build a cello or violin, whose strings resonate within the wooden frame with an echoed intimacy.

* * *

“Your DI. He had a bit of an overreaction to this case, wouldn’t you say?”

Pembroke sat at the Boss’ desk, looking as out of place as a double bass in the flute section. “I know your team is tight knit, but all that shouting and swearing over a DC? Very unprofessional.”

Miles’ jaw clenched in an attempt to prevent something unprofessional from spilling out of his own mouth.

“Well, you see sir…” he began to explain.

“Oh, and I’ll need a full background on DC Kent – his friends, family et cetera. I didn’t see a wife or girlfriend at the hospital last night, I assume then he’s unattached?”

“Not quite, sir…”

“Miles, can’t you give DI Chandler a ring and get him back here? This was a deliberate attack on a police officer - we’ll need all hands on deck for this.”

Miles had worked with Pembroke once before, and the man had changed little. While on a train of thought, his brain appeared to have no room for anything else. His large orbicular ears apparently failed to pass on any outside stimulus until he himself had finished thinking aloud. He meant well, but he was exceptionally frustrating to work for. Even Buchan was easier to cope with.

“Sir, with all due respect, I’m not going to ask DI Chandler to come back to the station.” Miles raised the dynamic of his speech a few notches. “It wouldn’t be right, and he’d be no use to you at the moment anyway.”

Pembroke looked up, his bushy eyebrows raised. “Why ever not?”

“Him and Kent, sir… well, they’re more than just colleagues, put it that way.”

Pembroke stuffed one of his sausage-like fingers into his left ear and wiggled it hard. “I’m sorry. DI Chandler and DC Kent are what?”

“They’re living together, sir. As a couple. They’ve been together for… oh, getting on for two years now. That’s why Joe was so upset last night, and there’s no way you can expect him to work on this investigation. Or any other right now. Sir.” Miles spoke firmly but without malice, much as he had done to Joe all those years ago at the first forging of their friendship.

“Oh. I see.” Pembroke sat silently for several seconds. “And this is common knowledge?”

“They haven’t kept it a secret, sir, if that’s what you mean. They’re discreet when they’re at work but they don’t pretend.”

Miles had been the first to be told when Joe and Kent had finally got their acts together and admitted that they fancied each other. He had not really needed them both to sit him down in Joe’s office with an amber glass of single malt, although he had appreciated the gesture. For Miles, it had been obvious the moment they had each walked into the Incident Room that morning. Joe had walked with a lighter tread, like some hidden force was literally lifting him up by his shoulders. He had smiled more freely too, even laughing at one of Mansell’s rubbish jokes. At the same time, Kent’s lithe frame had seemed more substantial, more visible, as though he had suddenly decided to stop hiding in shadows. _About time too_ , Miles had thought.

Pembroke shifted noisily in his chair, considering the unexpected information he had just received. His jowly face creased in a thoughtful frown, the furrows rucking his face into something akin to sand dunes.

“In that case I suppose I’m going to need to ask DI Chandler a few questions.”

Miles was prevented from responding by a sharp rapping at the door, which heralded Riley’s arrival. Her still watery eyes glowed with satisfaction.

“Skip? Sir? You’re going to want to see this.”

Riley’s trawl through hours of CCTV footage had not proven to be in vain. Somehow the attacker had inadvertently chosen the best possible place for his crime in terms of camera coverage, suggesting that he had not taken time to suss out the location of cameras.

 _Amateur or complacent?_ Miles scribbled in his notebook.

The whole incident had been filmed in glorious technicolour, albeit of a rather pixelated variety. It was ideal in terms of evidence. Every single detail had been captured – the assailant’s bruise-coloured hoodie that unfortunately rendered his face in shadow, the way Kent used his own body to shelter himself from the biting air while he made a call on his mobile phone, the attacker walking past Kent only to double back after he had hung up, the harsh metallic glint of the gun thrust into Kent’s side, the perpetrator backing Kent up to the wall before taking aim with two shots to his chest and stomach, the way Kent crumpled to the ground like a rag doll, the smears of blood on the wall leaving a grisly path, the terrible jolt of Kent’s body each time another wild kick was applied. It was brutal, visceral and ruthless. Miles made a mental note to make sure the Boss never saw this tape.

“And look at this,” Riley went on. “This is from a camera further down the street.”

Miles rubbed his eyes with the flats of his fingers. Staring at grainy CCTV film, in combination with his lack of sleep, was making his eyelids feel as though they were encasing a sandy desert.

Here,” Riley jabbed a finger at the screen, “you can see Kent coming out of the pub with his sister. They go their separate ways and he starts walking back towards the station. But look here.” She pointed at a blurry figure emerging into shot from the other side. “That’s the attacker. You still can’t see his face but same purple hoodie, see? And it looks like he’s following Emerson the whole way up the street. I mean, it’s not conclusive, but I reckon this guy deliberately followed him until he got to a place where the street was a bit quieter. It was very calculated. Not just spur of the moment.”

“Good,” Pembroke hummed. “So perhaps our attacker saw DC Kent leaving and fingered him as a target. Didn’t like the look of him for some reason. Maybe he thought his fairly delicate stature made him an easy mark.”

“Surely, sir,” interrupted Miles, “it’s more likely that Kent was known to the attacker, to have assaulted him so violently and deliberately? Someone with a grudge? It doesn’t feel random to me.”

“Hmm, yes maybe.” Pembroke rotated himself away from the screen and began to plod back to the office. “That’s something to follow up on.”

Miles sighed and rolled his eyes at Riley. At this rate he feared it would be a long investigation.

* * *

The Intensive Care Unit was a repetitive chorus of pings and beeps, a hypnotic minimalism that appeared to both suspend time and also mark its passing. Joe lay slumped at Emerson’s side, gently embracing Emerson’s left hand in his own. His thumb circled over the knuckles in time with the beat of Emerson’s pulse monitor. Some illogical part of his brain told him that as long as he kept pace with Emerson’s heartbeat, then he could force that pulse to keep going. If he slowed or stopped, it would be like giving up.

With his spare hand, he massaged his neck, rolling his head from side to side to relieve the dense throbbing that gravitated from the back of his head down his shoulders, culminating in a scarlet-sharp pain over his left shoulder blade. He had been crouched in the same position for too long; his muscles had tensed and frozen him into a clawed, hunched thing. Even when Erica had brought her mother in to see Emerson, Joe had only repositioned himself by a foot or so, flatly refusing to leave his side. It was testament to the seriousness of the situation that Mrs Kent had not said anything, the only sign of her disapproval being the narrowness of her lips and eyes. Mrs Kent had made little secret of her dislike of Joe’s relationship with her son, although she had never fully vocalised her reasoning. Joe did not think it was because he was a man, more the fact that he was Emerson’s boss. Mrs Kent no doubt blamed him for the amount of harm that Emerson had already suffered as a result of his job. Looking at her pinched expression, Joe had felt an overwhelming desire to tear at it with words, to rip it from her face, to shout and howl and force her to accept his right to be there. Except that he had no right. Not really. He and Emerson were partners, cohabiting, but that stood for little. Joe may have been Emerson’s In Case of Emergency contact, but Erica and Mrs Kent were his next of kin. His family. For such a tall man, he had never felt so small or insignificant.

They had stayed for a couple of hours, the three of them barely talking. They remained, three isolated watchers, silently observing Emerson’s chest rise and fall with the ventilator. Eventually, Mrs Kent said she felt suffocated by the oppressive atmosphere in the room, and Joe had been left alone with Emerson once again. That was the way he preferred it. He had never been good at sharing.

Joe shifted his legs beneath him slightly to allow his muscles space to loosen. He was nowhere near relaxed enough to do anything else. Relaxation was a fairly unfamiliar sensation to him. As long as he could remember, he had been a tightly wound and brittle coil, more inclined to snap than to bend. Emerson, and Miles too in his way, had found a way of easing between the gaps, slackening and releasing, but Joe was still Joe, and sprung back tensely whenever stress overtook him. As his limbs stretched, they tingled to reassert their existence, indignant at having been ignored for so long. A solid numbness extended upwards from his toes, as though his legs were being hollowed out and incrementally replaced with clay.

“Joe. How are you?” Joe jumped in surprise, stubbing his toe on the corner of Emerson’s bed, as Miles entered the room with DCI Pembroke. Burning ripples radiated from the bang, but his pins and needles deadened any pain.

“Miles,” Joe breathed. “It’s good to see you.”

“God, you look awful,” said Miles. “Are you eating properly?”

Joe twisted his mouth drily. “To do that, I’d have had to have eaten something in the first place.”

“You got to eat,” said Miles, throwing a sandwich at him. “Brain food, remember? You’re no good to him if you keel over as well.”

“Yes mother,” muttered Joe. He slid the sandwich under his chair with a resentful shove. Miles rolled his eyes in exasperation.

Pembroke took a step forward. “I need to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, DI Chandler.”

Joe cleared his throat. “No, that’s ok. Fine.”

“I understand that you and DC Kent are… um… what term do you prefer… boyfriends?”

Joe winced at the word. He had always hated it. Although strictly speaking that was what they were, it sounded puerile and foolish. Something for teenagers.

_I’m forty-five for fuck’s sake._

“He’s my partner, yes.”

“So he would confide in you if something was troubling him?”

“I hope so. Yes, he would. I’m sure he would.” Joe was not sure at all. Something had bothered Emerson that he had not talked to Joe about – Joe himself. Although he had tried, had he not, yesterday afternoon, but Joe had not been prepared to listen.

Joe shook himself. He was not going to go over all that again. That way madness lay.

“Did anyone have a grudge against DC Kent? Did he feel threatened at all?”

“Threatened? No, I don’t think so.” The fingers on Joe’s right hand clawed at his forehead, wrinkling then flattening the flesh on his brow. “He was quite shaken after the break-in the other night. Well, we both were, but Emerson took it particularly badly. But that was probably because it woke him suddenly.”

Joe was hesitant to relate in great detail the amount of distress Emerson had been in. It felt too private, too personal. He did not want to tell them that Emerson had woken up in the middle of one of his periodic nightmares, where the terror of his striping was replayed again and again. He did not want them to know about the cold sweat on Emerson’s face, about the remembered agony echoed around his mouth, about the tension in his limbs or the entanglement of bed sheets around his legs. He did not want to explain that being awoken from this by the stifled, uninvited movements of an intruder downstairs had so startled Emerson that Joe still had elliptical nail marks on his wrist. That Emerson had still been on alert days later. When Joe said that he did not think that Emerson had felt threatened, that was a slight untruth. The difference was that the threat came from within.

“Break in?” prompted Pembroke.

“Yes, on Tuesday night. Around 1 a.m., I think. We heard a noise downstairs, so I went to investigate. I didn’t see the intruder, they must have heard me coming and bolted. We reported it of course, but nothing was taken. I suppose I interrupted them before they had a chance.”

“Right, right,” Pembroke murmured. He flicked through his notebook. “I understand DC Kent was assaulted once before, during a case six years ago? Could this be related?”

“No… no.” The pins and needles in Joe’s legs had turned into an urgent salty itch crawling up his lower back, a twitching and fidgeting, as though his entire skin was writhing within itself. He brushed his hands down his waistcoat, his thighs, the back of his shoulders, trying to sweep the irritation away from him. A frustrated roar snarled out of him.

“No, they’re not related. The men who attacked him before are… dead.” Both his hands migrated to his scalp and scratched wildly.

Miles broke in. “I think that’s probably enough for now, sir.”

Pembroke looked nonplussed. “Oh… er… very well then. We’ll keep you updated, DI Chandler.”

“I’ll meet you in the car, sir,” said Miles, as Pembroke tugged open the door and shuffled out.

Miles heaved over a dark green leather bag and set it at Joe’s feet.

“You never said how you were doing,” he needled.

Joe looked at him, blankly. “I feel useless, Miles. Completely redundant. Like a book whose pages have been ripped out.” He spoke vacantly, his mind only vaguely aware of what his mouth was saying.

“Well not everyone likes reading, I suppose.” Miles rested a hand on Joe’s shoulder, squeezing it warmly. “Maybe you’d feel better for a wash and change, eh?” He gestured towards the leather case. “I got you a few things from your flat.”

“Thank you.” Joe wriggled with discomfort. The itching was getting worse, like tiny ants swarming over him. He knew why – his demons would not let him rest easy. Not until he had assuaged them.

“Kent’ll be fine for a few minutes, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Miles reassured him. “He’s not exactly going anywhere, is he?”

A tremor ran through Joe’s body, the vibration of a guitar string plucked hard. He could no longer sit still – he had to wash the night off him.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said to the room. He was not sure if he believed Emerson could hear him.

* * *

Joe stepped out of the bathroom feeling fresher than he had for hours. The itchy prickling had been washed away, allowing access to an unfamiliar emotion. It swelled tentatively within his stomach like a cloud on a cliff top, a cottony gladness with the barest of sharp edges. Hope. Emerson had had a good night, he had survived those first critical twelve hours. Although the nurses were reluctant to be very positive, surely that was a good sign?

As he walked along the corridor back towards ICU, he became aware that a tinny melody had lodged itself surreptitiously in his brain, stuck on repeat like an orchestra on a merry-go-round. He recognised the tune, but could not name it. It was from a track that Emerson played a lot at home – in his mind’s eye Joe saw Emerson dancing to its beat over the washing up or while awaiting the tell-tale click of the kettle. For the first time in nearly twenty-four hours, Joe felt able to venture a wistful smile. His fingers tapped against his legs as though on a miniature, portable piano, and allowed himself a minute, just a minute, to enjoy the music implanted in his head. The melody and counter-melodies weaved through his body in a mesmeric dance, entwining with his being as he and Emerson surely, _surely_ , soon would be. Body to body, soul to soul. Hope against hope.

The music grew louder in his head, taking on an almost shrill quality. Suddenly, it was no longer just in his imagination, but echoing down the corridor, ricocheting off the glistering walls. It had undergone a sea-change, from a consonant, harmonic melody to a cacophonous and dissonant shriek. The noise emanated from Emerson’s room.

“Joe, JOE!” Erica’s voice rang, panic-ridden, about him. “Where have you been?”

His heart plummeting and leaping, Joe accelerated towards where she and Mrs Kent stood, hands pressed against the glass windows of the ward.

“What’s happened?” His eyes followed the length of her arms to where Emerson lay, in a tumult of medics, a thin grey-clear tube arising from his skull.

“I don’t know, Joe,” Erica wailed. “Something about his brain... swelling… I don’t know. The monitor just started… oh God!”

She grabbed onto Joe, desperately beating her fists against his chest. Each blow drove air from his lungs until he was gasping, straining to inhale. He was trapped inside a breathless, red raw scream. All speech was gone, all thought was gone, all hope was gone. As the doctor explained that the pressure on Emerson’s brain from his head injury had caused him to relapse into a coma, Joe’s cotton-soft hope was burnt and lay like ash in his mouth.

* * *

 

It was just past midday when Dr Llewellyn arrived with the ballistics report. Her mien held the same regretful shock she had exhibited when presenting McCormack’s post-mortem results.

“I’m afraid you’re not going to like this.”

Had Llewellyn usually been given to dramatic pauses, Miles would have said that this was one. However, knowing and working with her for so long, he knew that that was not her way. She did not hesitate for effect. She lingered over her words, choosing them carefully, knowing their power, fearful of their result.

“The gun. SOCO have run the bullets and we’ve been able to pinpoint the exact weapon they came from. Make and model all match the striations.” She swallowed. “This particular weapon was decommissioned five years ago, and up ‘til then had been used by the Met Armed Response Unit in Whitechapel. Kent was shot by a police-issue weapon.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Sorry this chapter was a bit delayed. It was a hard one to write and it's the longest so far by quite a long way. Hope you all are still enjoying it. Yveta x


	5. Chapter 5

Joe sipped steadily at the rim of the plastic cup he held in his hands. He winced as the hot liquid scalded his tongue, causing a bright-dark burning sensation on its tip. Added to that, it was probably the worse cup of tea he had ever had the misfortune of drinking, even worse than when Mansell did the tea run in the office. It was so bitter he almost gagged, and it left a slightly greasy sheen clinging to the roof of his mouth. Not for the first time, Joe yearned for Emerson’s skill at making tea – he had the innate ability to find the perfect ratio of tea leaves to hot water to milk.

“Have you been taking lessons on tea preparation from Mansell?” Joe asked Erica, sat beside him.

She exhaled loudly, her shoulders bouncing in a gesture towards laughter. She smiled wanly at him.

“Ha ha,” she said drily. “What did you expect? It’s from a hospital vending machine, not the Ritz café.”

It was just the two of them, keeping vigil together at Emerson’s side. Mansell had been in an hour earlier to chaperone Mrs Kent back to his and Erica’s house, and the nurses who were monitoring Emerson’s condition were at that moment between rounds. Joe was surprised to find himself glad of the company. He had had enough of being alone with his disorderly thoughts, and he appreciated the chance to sit with someone who cared for Emerson as much as he did. He did not even object when Erica reached out and took his hand in hers.

“I’m sorry about what I said last night,” she said, quietly. “I was just upset, and lashing out. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

A lightening-sharp pain clenched somewhere between Joe’s chest and stomach. “No, it’s… You were right.”

Erica looked at him. “What I said was horrible. Unforgiveable. To even think that you might be relieved... I hate myself for saying it.”

Joe swallowed. “Please don’t. I’ve never been much good at saying how I feel, and I’ve been a terrible partner to Emerson at times. He’s given me so much, and I just keep closing myself off out of fear. I’ve only got myself to blame if he doesn’t know how much I… need him.”

Joe thought back to all the chances Emerson had given him, all the times Joe had left him down. Emerson had been right there, playing all the cues in the right places, and Joe had not even been able to pick up his instrument.

“He did… _does_ know, I’m sure of it,” Erica replied. “I wasn’t lying last night when I said that he worships the ground you walk on. I’ve known him a lot longer than you have, and these last two years have made him so happy. _You_ make him happy, Joe.”

Joe wanted so desperately to believe her. But he could not drive out the cruel, thin little voice inside his head: _He never knew. How could he have known? And now you’ll never get the chance to tell him. You had your chance to be happy and you blew it. You’re going to lose him like you lose everything._

Joe shook his head slowly, one slender hand covering his face, hiding himself from Erica’s gaze. She tugged gently on his arm.

“You know what, he hardly ever even has a bad thing to say about you. Not about anything serious anyway. Well, there was once when he moaned about you taking nearly twenty minutes to decide on a pack of rice in Waitrose…”

Joe remembered the incident well. He had been completely stumped by all the different varieties and had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to decide which one was right. Emerson had ended up waiting patiently for him in the supermarket’s café, his mouth turned up in amusement as he sipped a frothy cappuccino.

Erica smiled affectionately. “But he only told me that ‘cause he wanted me to moan about Finlay, so he’d have some ammunition next time he pissed him off at work. I think he found it funny, to be honest.”

“Funny? I’m glad I’m keep you all so entertained.”

“I don’t mean it like that, Joe. It was more like one more reason why he loves you. One of your little quirks.”

Joe grunted, as Erica’s fingers applied a reassuring pressure around his.

The two of them sat in a comfortable, still silence as the hospital bustled around them. Shoes squeaked and trollies rattled up and down the corridors outside as people went about their day. Joe reminded himself that for hundreds of doctors, nurses, porters and administrators this was just their place of work. The hospital was not, for them, a destination for trauma and tragedy, or a place where time stood still. Time was not the endless inhalation that it was for Joe – they simply counted the hours between the beginning and end of shift. Life, in all its mediocrity, went on oblivious.

“Do you think he can hear us?” asked Erica.

“I don’t know,” replied Joe. He looked at Emerson’s face, trying to read it. Usually, Emerson kept nothing hidden. All of his thoughts and feelings, from joy to anger, would be written across his face as bold as newsprint. But the coma kept his features blank, like a snowy field un-walked upon.

“What would you say to him, if he can hear?”

Joe shrugged and reached over to caress Emerson’s forehead. His dark curls had been shaved for surgery, leaving his crown bare and shadowy. The stubble on his head scraped against Joe’s fingers, a callous reminder of his condition.

Joe spoke sotto voce, more to himself than to Erica. His speech tremored a little with emotion.

“I’d tell him how sorry I am. I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you, Emerson. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t leave you until you woke up, but I failed you. I’m… a pathetic man who doesn’t deserve you, and I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you. I cared more about making myself clean than staying by your side. If I’d just been here… I have no right to ask this, but please, Emerson, don’t leave me. Please. Please. Please.”

His voice trailed off into dust as he leant over his lover’s bed and kissed his brow. He stayed prone for several moments, breathing in Emerson’s skin. He smelt unlike himself. His natural raw musk had become clinical and sterile. With his eyes closed, Joe could almost believe that a complete stranger lay before him. Only the light touch of his lips to Emerson’s provided any sort of identifiable marker. But even that was alien as Emerson lay unresponsive beneath him.

Erica sat wordlessly for some minutes, her dark brown eyes, so like Emerson’s, spilling down her cheek. When she spoke, her voice was heavy but tinged with melancholy laughter. “I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, Joe, but you’re not the centre of the universe. Not everything is your fault.”

Joe turned to look at her, his face lined with pain. “Isn’t it?” he asked, desperately.

Erica’s laughter bubbled a little further towards the surface. “No, you tit. Don’t be silly.”

She leant into his back and drew him into a friendly reverse hug.

“Hey, isn’t that your Sergeant?” Erica’s eyes were drawn towards the window, where stood a sandy-haired, besuited man. Miles raised his hand in greeting before persuading the door-handle downwards to enter the ward.

“Afternoon, you two,” he said. “Any more news?”

Erica glanced towards Joe. He did not feel able to speak.

“They said that the pressure in his brain has gone down,” Erica explained. “But he’s not responding to any stimuli so…” She shrugged. “We just don’t know yet.”

Miles stretched his mouth into a sympathetic half-smile.

Erica seemed to have made an executive decision to remain positive, despite the greyness of her face and the worry writ around her eyes. “But we’re helping the nurses to give him a bed bath later, aren’t we, Joe?” She giggled, slightly. “Can you imagine what he’d say if he knew?”

Joe smiled despite himself. He rather thought that Emerson would be loving all the attention he was receiving.

“I think it’s only fair though if I do his top half and you do his bottom half,” Erica teased. A pink flush spread across Joe’s face and neck.

“Listen, I’ve got something to tell you both.” Miles looked uneasy. “I think maybe you’ll want to sit down for this.”

Taken aback, Joe and Erica followed Miles’ instructions, taking their seats. Erica’s back was straight, like a student awaiting the lesson, but Joe slumped, curved over himself roundly.

“We’ve managed to trace the gun. It was used regularly by the Met Police Armed Response unit until late 2010 when it was decommissioned on account of its age.” Miles eyeballed Joe. “We now know that the last time it was used in active service was escorting Johnny and Jimmy Kray to Whitechapel nick.”

Joe’s head swirled. He felt as though he was caught in a loop, a never-ending spiral where every time he thought he had reached the culmination, he found himself right back at the beginning. Each time he closed a case, a new one opened, which was really the same one repeated over and over again. This place, these cases, the Ripper, the Krays, all of them. They had altered, transposed, distorted so much. They had changed Emerson from being the innocent young copper he had been, to the damaged man who still suffered nightmares over what he’d been through. Who had bottled up his fear and distilled it into anger, very nearly destroying him. It had taken so much of Emerson’s courage to recover from that. No matter what Erica said, Joe would never stop blaming himself for it. They had changed Joe into someone being so overtaken by paranoia that he had thought Emerson was a mole. _Emerson_ of all people. And here they were again, the Krays. Not in the flesh, no, but their phantoms looming all the same. That was Whitechapel for you. The dead never truly slept.

Somewhere in the periphery, Joe heard the door slam and Erica’s strangled cry of “That fucking job!”

He could not find it in himself to blame her.

* * *

Call him oblivious, Miles often did, but Joe had not thought to realise at first how traumatised Emerson had been by his striping. He had been so overjoyed to see him walking, sans crutches, into Ed Buchan’s living room at the peak of their battle against the Krays, so relieved that Kent had forgiven him that he had assumed it was all over. He had not even noticed how frightened he had been in the back room of the Grave Maurice pub, how his concerns about ‘dying in the next thirty minutes’ had been more than just nervousness.

It had been years before Joe fully appreciated what Emerson had gone through. He remembered the day as though it were burnished into his brain – the day when Emerson had first opened to him, in more ways than one.

It had been a rare evening where they had managed to leave the office at the appointed time, and Emerson had insisted they make the most of it. Joe had cooked a simple but elegant meal for the two of them at his flat, which they ate together, while the light outside dimmed through rainbow shades into deep darkness.

After dinner, they lay entangled together on Joe’s sofa, partially unclothed, Joe’s crisp white shirt hanging open exposing his chest. Emerson’s slender fingers traced a trail of goose pimples along Joe’s torso as he dipped his mouth gently onto Joe’s. Joe allowed himself to sink into the kiss, to lose all thought in the feel of Emerson surrounding him. A feather brush of Emerson’s tongue beckoned Joe on. His brain fizzed and crackled, sending a shooting stabbing blazing direct to his pelvis. He moaned and shuddered involuntarily at the sensation of Emerson nibbling at his throat. He ran his hands southwards, enjoying the almost silent whimpers of pleasure that arose from Emerson as he approached his waist. Joe’s fingers, seemingly of their own accord, fumbled hap-handedly with the younger man’s belt buckle. A rushing, primal need gripped him, which only grew as Emerson’s legs slid free of their suited restraint.

“Will you stay tonight? _With_ me.”

“You mean..?” Emerson pulled away an inch, a delighted smile invading his face.

“Yes.” Joe leant forward, capturing another kiss from Emerson’s surprised lips. Emboldened, he forged a path of light caresses down his body until his cheek rested on Emerson’s thigh. There, to Joe’s astonishment, writ clear on the fragile dappled skin, was a tattoo. A golden phoenix, roughly four square inches in size, encompassed about by a vivid orange-black blaze. The heat from the fire seemed to emanate through Emerson’s skin.

The phoenix stared forcefully up at Joe, eyes aflame, daring him to carry on. The sweet-sore ache in his groin was almost unbearable, and judging by appearances, Emerson felt the same.

“Are you sure?” gasped Emerson.

“Oh God, yes,” Joe growled, as he traced the pattern of the flames with his tongue.

Afterwards, they lay enfolded within the rumpled sheets of Joe’s bed, bodies burning like two colliding meteors.

“That was…” breathed Joe.

“Yeah,” came the response.

“We can do that again, right?” Joe asked, cheekily.

Emerson gave a low hum. “Yes… not now… too sleepy…” he murmured.

The two men held each other closely, skin on skin. Their breathing gradually regulated until they were in time with each other, gentle semibreves, their chests rising and falling together as one.

“So… you have a tattoo?” Joe’s fingers languidly circled the spot where the inked image lay. He felt Emerson tense slightly beneath his touch.

“It’s not what you think,” he said tightly. “It wasn’t like a whim or anything. I needed it.”

“Needed it?”

“Yes.” Emerson’s voice held an air of confrontation within its notes. “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”

Joe tilted Emerson’s chin towards him with a silk-soft motion. “Try me.”

Emerson’s eyes, dark pools of black coffee, gazed into Joe’s, holding them for a breathless moment.

Eventually, he swallowed and began to speak:

“After the Krays attacked me… I was a mess. I was so scared, Joe. Little noises behind me made me jump out of my skin. I was walking around constantly looking over my shoulder. The weird cases got to me as well, and I didn’t think I was up to the job anymore. I mean, what sort of policeman is frightened of shadows… even his own shadow? So I put on a front so you wouldn’t notice, but then I was angry that you didn’t. No, don’t say anything…”

Joe had opened his mouth, but he promptly clapped it shut.

“The worst part was that I knew I had brought it on myself.” Joe’s face collapsed in disbelief. “No, it’s true,” Emerson continued. “They heard me say that they needed a slap, that’s why they striped me. They said… I should learn to watch my mouth. It took a _lot_ of therapy for me to stop blaming myself. I needed to do something that wasn’t self-destructive. That would bring an end to it – well, maybe not an end but, like, an ellipsis… a coda. So I got this tattoo, as a sort of reminder that I can get over anything. That I can go through fire and come out the other side. I know that sounds silly.”

Emerson looked challengingly at Joe. “It really did help me.”

His eyes dared Joe to laugh, to mock. Nothing was further from Joe’s mind.

“Oh Emerson,” he sighed, “I wish you’d told me. I had no idea.”

Emerson glared at him fiercely. “It’s fine. It’s over - there’s no need to go on about it. It happened, and there we are.” His jaw constricted determinedly. “I don’t need you to pity me.”

There was so much that Joe wanted to say, to ask, but one glance at Emerson’s rigid countenance told him that that would be a bad idea. He contented himself by planting the barest of soft kisses on Emerson’s forehead.

“I don’t pity you,” he whispered. “You’re probably the strongest person I know.”

* * *

 

Miles flipped on the headlights of his car, their jaundiced light leaching into the dusky afternoon. He had not wanted to leave Joe, not after dropping the bombshell about the provenance of the gun, but he had a job to do. Normally, Miles would have been able to look out for Joe while on the job, but he was pulled away. His friendship with Joe lay in one place, his loyalty and dedication to his job lay in another. This whole case had ripped everything apart, like so many victims had been.

He still dreamt occasionally about the night they found Mary Bousfield, torn to pieces in Mitre Square. Mary had been a good pal of his, a regular drinking partner. She could down a pint faster than most of the bobbies at the station, never pausing for breath as the ruby red liquid bubbled down her throat. Miles could not think about that without also remembering the way her blood, dark and venous, still warm, had oozed out of that same throat. What had happened to her had plumbed the depths of human evil. As for what her husband had done afterwards, well, Miles could empathise if not condone.

It did not take long for him to reach his destination. After all, Whitechapel was only so big. It still amazed Miles how such a relatively small area could birth so much horror, so much anguish, so much death. As though the world in microcosm centred on its twisted streets. The eye of the storm, the centre of the whirlpool.

The car sounded one final growling chord as Miles pulled into the precinct of the Armed Response Unit Headquarters, and switched off the engine. He recognised Pembroke’s car parked messily beside him, and he clicked his door open as he saw the DCI stepping out.

“Ah, Miles. Shall we?” Pembroke signalled for Miles to accompany him inside. Somehow, the knowledge that the building housed a huge arsenal, along with dozens of highly trained officers who operated it on a daily basis, made Miles slightly intimidated. He had worked with armed police previously, many times, but he had never before given much thought to the men and women behind the weapons. They would have families, friends, hobbies. Their careers may have been the skilled deployment of dangerous machinery, but they were not themselves machines. Whoever had shot Kent had a very human reason for wanting to do so. A machine could not hate.

The duty inspector greeted them as they entered. Seemingly, Pembroke had telephoned ahead to inform him of their arrival.

“Good afternoon. Inspector Reeder. How can I help you, gentlemen?”

“Yes,” hummed Pembroke, wrestling with his breast pocket to extract his notebook. “Yes, we are investigating a shooting which took place last night on Commercial Street. We believe the weapon used was one of yours.”

Reeder’s head propelled itself backwards, his eyes widening. “That’s impossible.” His voice became almost falsetto in his shock. “All our arms are carefully documented and accounted for.”

“This particular gun was decommissioned some years ago,” explained Miles. “We were hoping you might be able to shed a bit more light on its last movements in the unit. How was it disposed of?”

Reeder fumbled agitatedly in his desk. It took all of Miles’ willpower not to snort. Human? If this was how Inspector Reeder reacted under stress, it was a wonder the Met ever allowed him to handle a firearm.

Pembroke made no attempt to be subtle when looking at his watch. Tact, Miles recalled, had never been his strongest point. The stark overhead lighting reflected obnoxiously off the glass watch face and bounced onto an advert for a locksmith, W. B. Field & Sons, featured in the local paper which was folded asymmetrically on the desk.

“Here we are.” The relief in Reeder’s voice was like the loosening of a taut chain. He plucked out a buff folder from within the depths of the filing cabinet. “This is the weapons log going back seven years. Every officer signs their firearm in and out with each job – it’s a sackable offence for anyone to take a gun illegitimately – and, as you can see, it’s counter-signed by the duty inspector to confirm that every weapon was returned as recorded.”

Pembroke ran his stubby fingers through the pages of the file, one eye fixed on the serial number of the gun in question, jotted in his notebook in Riley’s handwriting.

“What about records of disposal? Do you keep those too?” asked Miles.

“Umm,” flailed Reeder, “if they’re older than three years, they’d be in the paper store out back. I can get them for you, but it might take a while. It’s rather overcrowded.”

“If you would,” grunted Miles.

“Of course. Will tomorrow morning be early enough?”

“Guess it’ll have to be, won’t it?” Miles had lost all of his earlier apprehension, and was left feeling mightily pissed off.

“Ah ha!” boomed Pembroke. “Gotcha!”

“What is it, sir?” Miles swung around to follow the DCI’s line of sight.

“This is it, Miles,” Pembroke exclaimed, his face cracking into a satisfied grin. “Last used in 2010 by a PC Don Carter.”

“Don?” Reeder said curiously. “Oh well, he no longer works in Whitechapel.”

“Course he doesn’t,” Miles said, groaning in resignation.

“No, he was promoted to sergeant and transferred over to the ARU in Peckham two years ago.”

Pembroke straightened up and rubbed his hands together with a doughy rasping.

“Well, I think that’s us done for now. Thank you, Inspector Reeder, you’ve been most helpful.”

Miles felt truncated, cut off. He felt sure that Reeder was acting strangely, but whether that was because he was hiding something, or simply because he was concerned about the organisation of his filing system, Miles was not yet sure. He would have liked to stay and ask more questions, but Pembroke was already halfway out of the door, his green jacket flapping behind him.

“Come, Miles,” he called. “Fancy a trip south of the river?”

Miles fixed Reeder with a glare as he exited.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, as ominously as he could muster.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you might be able to tell, I've never written smut before... Which is why I kind of chickened out a bit here. Let's just say I was giving Joe and Emerson a bit of privacy :)


	6. Chapter 6

“How you bearing up, love?” The night nurse edged a look at Joe, before busying herself with adjusting the various silvery tubes attached to Emerson, the gossamer threads connecting him to life. Joe did not want to know what she was doing, exactly. As long as it was keeping Emerson alive, he did not care.

“I’m…” Joe realised he did not know how to finish that sentence. “How is he?”

The nurse scribbled something in Emerson’s medical notes and walked over to stand by Joe’s side. A shadow created by her body in the brutal light shifted as she moved, falling from Emerson’s face.

“He’s doing well. He’s not out of the woods yet by any means, but the signs are positive. His BP is normal, GCS is up to 5…”

“Sorry, GCS?” Joe questioned.

“It means he’s beginning to respond to pain stimuli.”

“That’s good?”

“Well, it’s a step in the right direction, that’s for certain.” She offered a reassuring smile. “I’ll leave you two alone now. You stay as long as you like, alright?”

Joe’s emotions were tumbling about him, as though a juggler had taken up residence in his chest. Emerson was responding to pain. Apparently that was good. But that also meant that he could be feeling pain at that moment, did it not? His still form could be concealing hidden agonies, pulling, gripping, biting beneath the surface. Surely Emerson had been through enough pain already?

“Oh Emerson,” Joe choked, as the nurse withdrew with a sympathetic smile. “I wish you could talk to me, tell me what you’re feeling.”

Joe’s internal juggler slipped and dropped every pin. A sudden seasick weight hit the pit of his stomach with such force that Joe almost reeled. His face contorted with nausea.

“But you can’t tell me, can you? And I’ve no right to expect you to, not when… not when I’ve never told you.”

For the first time in his life, Joe felt that his feelings were truly a part of him, something felt by him, rather than something acted upon him. A yearning need shredded though him to finally articulate his emotions, to loose what had been kept locked away for so many years. As though a floodgate had opened, Joe’s thoughts spilled from him, splashing, rushing, dashing over each other chaotically, as waves crashing on shingle.

“All my life, I locked myself away in a coma of my own making, keeping a barricade between me and everyone else, hardly aware of those around me. I was almost totally unresponsive to human contact. I told myself that I was just particular, that I didn’t need anyone, but I was wrong. Because then I met you and… everything changed. You awoke something in me, Emerson, something that I didn’t think existed. I wasn’t sleepwalking through life any more, I wasn’t blind. I could feel things. Happiness, jealousy, joy. Even pain was okay because it proved that I was alive. And oh, what perfect pain you made me feel. Even when I didn’t know why I felt it. Even when I didn’t understand my feelings for you, when I was trying to deny them, trying so hard to control them.

“But you understood, didn’t you, long before I did? You knew, and you just waited. And I’ve kept you waiting. You’re still waiting now, aren’t you, for me to tell you what I really feel. I’ve got no excuse, just cowardice. My heart has known it for so long, but I just couldn’t acknowledge it. Saying it out loud would mean admitting that… that a part of me was not my own. That I wasn’t wholly in control of myself. And you know, _you know_ out of everyone how much I need control. So I could never say it. Poetry helped me to manage it, because I could say ‘This, _this_ is what I mean’ but it was only ever a substitute. I was just hiding behind someone else’s words, and that wasn’t fair to you. You… you deserve to hear me say it myself, in my own, flawed, pathetic way.”

Joe’s throat closed, an agonising, exquisitely swollen ache constricting his neck. He struck his temples with his fists, trying to shake his thoughts into some semblance of order.

“And I don’t even know if you can hear me now,” he croaked, tears blurring the corners of his eyes. “But you’re the best thing in my life, Emerson. Without you, I… All my life I knew I was working towards something. I had always thought it was my career but I realise now that it was all building up to you. Anything good before that was just like Plato’s cave… just a shadow, a dream of you… this… us.”

He stood, his joints popping and cracking in counterpoint.

“And I still haven’t said what I really mean,” he huffed in frustration, pounding his fists together. He took two deep breaths, followed by increasingly shallow ones, until he was hyperventilating, great gasping sobs clawing their way out of his mouth. He opened his mouth to speak and the words came spewing forth, heaved from within, spat out into the air from their place of safety.

“I love you. Oh God, Emerson, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love your face, your voice, the way you hold me, the way you look at me, the way my stomach fucking capsizes every time you’re with me. Jesus, I love every bit of you.”

Spent, Joe clutched a hand over his mouth to prevent the bilious hysteria that threatened to overcome him. His entire body shook like a vibrato string. To avoid falling over, he began an agitated pacing alongside the bed, swearing when his knee collided with the small bedside unit to the right of Emerson’s pallid head.

“Shit.” He had caught his knee directly on the handle, sending a sparkling blue-black pain stabbing down his leg. The door flew open, the force of the impact ejecting several of the contents within. Emerson’s personal effects lay scattered on the ground, like little islands of his life glittering in the sea of the floor. Little windows into Emerson’s existence. His mobile phone, earbud headphones, the pair of glasses that he occasionally used for reading, but never wore in public if he could help it. A snapshot into Emerson, parts of his life that sometimes even Joe was not privy to. Come to think of it, Joe did not remember seeing those earbuds before. Had Emerson always had them? He felt oddly guilty looking at the strewn belongings, as though he were invading his partner’s privacy. He frantically gathered up the objects, to pour them back into the cupboard whence they came. To keep them safe for when Emerson awoke. _If_ he awoke.

Emerson’s black faux-leather appointment diary had been kicked to lie almost underneath the bed. Joe reached into the murky underside to retrieve it. It lay open at the very end page, where a little pocket for extra storage was harboured in the back cover. A rumpled, evidently often handled, piece of A4 paper had slipped out, piebald speckles of dried blood pervading its fibrous material. Onto it had been photocopied a page from a book, a page which Joe was shocked to realise that he recognised. Page 188 from ‘The Complete English Poems by John Donne’. ‘The Good-Morrow’, the poem that Joe had shown to Emerson the previous summer in his aborted attempt to try to explain the depth of his feelings. He had feared that it had had only limited success, but maybe Emerson had understood. He had been carrying it around with him all that time, after all.

Beneath the printed text of the poem, Emerson had written something in his neat and meticulous hand. Joe’s eyes were drawn to this living fragment – he could feel Emerson in it, hear his voice. He almost imagined he could smell the touch of Emerson’s fingers as he stroked his own along the soft flowing letters.

_Emerson: A note from yourself_

_This poem. This is how Joe feels, or at least this is what I think he’d say if he could find the right words. He told you as much when you first read it. Remember that, even when he’s being all, you know, like he gets. Or when it feels like he’s rejecting you. Because he’s not, not really. When you’re frustrated because he won’t say out loud what you want to hear, read this again and remember that he’s already said it in the best way he knows how._

_Read it, and trust it. Trust him._

A slow warm tear tracked its way down Joe’s cheek and into the corner of his mouth. Its sweet saltiness invaded his tongue, forming a pincer movement in conjunction with the thick, sodden inflammation of his throat. How many times had Emerson needed the reassurance of these words? How often had he felt so rejected, unfulfilled, unloved? The paper had clearly been touched a lot. Had he needed to read it after their last conversation, when Joe had refused to countenance Emerson’s thoughts on marriage?

Emerson’s pulse monitor beat on, resolute, his life distilled into a tuneless series of beeps.

“Please don’t let that be the last thing we said,” Joe said, his voice hushed as if in prayer. “If I could reverse time and change it all, I would. I wish I hadn’t sent you away, I wish I’d… done everything differently. Why I had to panic and pretend not to know what I wanted… please don’t make me have to regret that forever. Emerson, you were right, you are always right. Because of course I want to be with you… I want to grow old with you… I _do_ want to marry you, if you’ll still have me.”

At that, something ruptured inside Joe, and years of pent up emotion flooded out of him like a monsoon upon a desert. 

* * *

Miles glanced at his watch. 7.15 am. Thirty-four hours since Kent had been shot, and what had they to show for it? Next to no forensics, CCTV which did not help identify the attacker, and a bare scrap of evidence showing what the gun had been doing six years earlier. Like a tone poem, everything swirled around, forming images just out of reach. He knew it was all there, it just needed to be pinned down. It was all too nebulous, and Miles liked specificity. Particularly when it was personal. There was not even any hint of a motive. Who would want to hurt Kent? He was just a kid. Of course, he was in his thirties, hardly a babe in arms, but he was still the youngest member of the team, and Miles felt a certain paternal fondness for him. Clearly, someone had wanted to hurt him, and had done, badly, six years before. But all the bent coppers involved in that case had been sacked long ago. The would-be Krays’ firm had broken up and been scattered to the wind. But winds could change, circle round, and that which had been blown away could be carried back. Miles’ sixth sense was telling him that Inspector Reeder knew more than he was letting on. Something was rotten somewhere in the Armed Response Unit, and Miles was determined to track down the source. He’d recognise that stink anywhere; he’d known it intimately during the Kray case. The stench of police corruption.

DCI Pembroke had scuttled back to his desk, fancying himself as a war general, leading the troops from behind the lines. Miles and Riley would be interviewing Sergeant Don Parker later that morning while Mansell checked out the disposal records of the weapons back in Whitechapel. However vague, however opaque, there were always leads to follow, and Detective Sergeant Miles, with his bloodhound senses, would follow them to the bitter end. But first, Ray Miles wanted to see his friend.

The corridors of the ICU were almost as familiar to Miles as those back at the station. Then again, all public institutions looked more or less the same – the same soulless walls, the same echoing passageways, the same anonymous waiting rooms. Waiting seemed to be the primary occupation of most of the residents of these buildings. Waiting for release, prison or death made little difference. Miles shivered in the draught as he opened the door to Kent’s room.

He immediately smothered his footsteps when he saw the long figure of a man draped over the right side of Kent’s bed. His hands flexed in slumber, clinging more tightly onto Kent’s. Although he looked terrible, his skin a mottled yellow, a distinctly unusual stubble upon his cheek, Miles sensed there was a new lightness about him. A clearness, a lucidity, like still translucent water, or a pure open chord. Miles could not put his finger on what exactly had changed, but there was something about the way in which Joe lay his head next to Kent’s that conveyed peace.

 _Well, at least he’s getting a bit of sleep,_ Miles thought thankfully.

He was tempted to leave and allow Joe to sleep on, but as he was reaching once again for the door handle, he heard a muted rustling and a croaky voice: “Miles?”

“Mornin’, Joe.” Miles turned and seated himself next to his companion. “You’re looking a bit better.”

Joe squinted and raised his eyes towards the ceiling, as though he were trying to look at his own face.

“I suppose I am… a bit,” he said. “I… got a lot off my chest last night.” He looked affectionately at Kent. “He was always a good listener.”

“Was there anything in particular that you told him?” asked Miles.

It was good to see Joe smiling, albeit tentatively. It extended the light to his eyes, relaxing his forehead into a calmer spectrum.

“When this is all over, hopefully you’ll be able to tell Judy she should start looking for a hat.”

As Joe’s meaning sunk in, Miles’ own smile caught up with his, overtaking it with a beam. He clapped a hand gently onto Joe’s shoulder with a friendly squeeze.

“Oh Joe,” he said, “I’m happy for you. What made you change your mind?”

Joe furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “I don’t think I did change my mind. I just… realised that I’d already decided.”

“Well that’s wonderful. Though I have to say, it’s not before time.” Miles cast a mischievous look at Joe. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”

“What… what do you mean? How long?”

Miles would never have called himself a romantic, and he certainly was not given to seeking out match-making opportunities willy-nilly. But even he had had to admit that there had been a special bond between Joe and Kent, more or less from the start. At first he had put it down to a mutual respect, mentor-student relationship, until he started noticing the looks. The eye contact that lingered just that moment too long. The way their glances would flicker towards and away, forwards and back, like synchronised swimmers in their own private dance, or the stylised conversation of chamber music. And the little excuses Joe would make to touch Kent’s shoulder – innocent enough, except that he did that to no-one else. Kent had clearly had a crush on Joe. But it had been the utter terror on Joe’s face, the self-flagellation, the threats when Kent was striped that had finally convinced Miles that the feelings ran the other way as well, whether Joe realised it or not.

“Oh, you know, since you declared war on the Krays. I mean, who does that, really?” He coughed out a laugh.

Joe’s body jerked upright, startled. “That early?”

Miles allowed himself a toothy grin. “Yup. It was bloody obvious, to be perfectly honest with you.”

“So why did you keep trying to set me up with all those women?”

Miles affixed a look of mock shame upon his face. “Maybe I was trying to force the issue a little bit.” He shrugged offhandedly. “So when _did_ you know then?”

Joe’s smile faded. “Not until… after Morgan. It was just something he said at the time… made me reconsider everything. And then she died, and it was all such a mess, and I had liked her, felt something for her, but I kept thinking about Emerson as well, and the guilt, Miles, it was almost unbearable. I didn’t handle the whole thing very well at all.”

“None of us handled that time very well, Joe. It wasn’t just you.”

Joe sighed. “No. Perhaps not.”

Joe suddenly twisted in his seat and narrowed his eyelids suspiciously at Miles.

“So… at Ed’s book launch… when you said I should try my luck with Erica… I thought at first you were pointing at Emerson.”

“Maybe I was.” A triumphal glint flashed in Miles’ eyes. “I _thought_ the lady - that’s you, by the way - did protest too much!”

Joe blushed, swallowed a smile, and batted him away with a gentle sweep of his left hand. “Oh, shut up,” he muttered, a breathy laugh hovering beneath the surface.

Miles laughed too, a healthy honest laugh that bubbled from his stomach, up into his chest and out through his rusty throat. The kind of laugh that drove all else before it – all anger, misery, malice washed away in its clean effervescence. As he chuckled, he stuck his hands into his jacket pocket and drew out two virgin, unopened pots of tiger balm.

“Oh I nearly forgot,” he said, proffering the tiny jars. “I figured you’d be running out by now.”

Joe bestowed a melting, grateful gaze upon Miles. “I… Thank you.”

No more needed to be said. The two men fell into a companionable silence. Miles found that Joe was one of the few people he knew with whom it was possible to sit and say nothing, and yet still feel as though a thousand words had been spoken. A thousand problems unburdened. A thousand confidences kept.

He was unspeakably relieved that Joe had rediscovered his ability to smile. He would have expected the stress of the situation to have overcome his friend, chewing him up and regurgitating him in pieces. But all the light fixtures were apparently still working, and Joe was able to talk about the future, the indeterminate ‘after this’, as something to anticipate rather than dread. There was anxiety, yes, and fear, but they were more than mingled with hope. It was something in the way he sat, his frigid posture thawed, the absent-minded circling of his thumb over the back of Kent’s hand, which reassured Miles the most.

After sitting in wordless consolation for a while, time’s arrow spoke through the medium of Miles’ phone alarm, reminding him that he had to meet Riley and drive to Peckham. Leads would not follow themselves. As Miles glanced at his watch and stood to leave, Joe grabbed at his arm, a flicker of tension steeling his face.

“Miles, you will tell me, won’t you… when you catch them? Whoever did this.”

“Yeah, course I will, Joe. You know that.”

“Are you any nearer? Can you tell me what you know?”

Joe’s childlike pleading moved Miles. He had seen that look so many times before, on the faces of victims’ families, begging to be kept informed, as if knowing every detail of how their loved one suffered might go some way towards relieving it. As though following the intricacies of the investigation would ameliorate their helplessness. Joe, as DI, would have experienced all of this too. But looking at him at that moment, Miles was not sure whether he was seeing DI Joseph Chandler, the detective, or Joe, the family member, his heart bruising for his lover, his would-be husband. If the two could indeed be separated, it was Kent who bridged the gap.

“There’s not much to tell, really. We’re going over to soft interview a lead – the officer who last used the gun when we brought in the Krays. And that’s about it. So, if you’ve got any bright ideas…?”

“Is that what all this is about? Someone on the Krays’ payroll that we missed, who now wants revenge, to finish what was started? Why now?”

“I don’t know. But I tell you this… I’m gonna bloody well find out.” Miles’ jaw locked in determination. He nodded firmly at Joe who tightened his lips in response.

“There was something weird, though,” said Miles, curiously. “We got CCTV of the attacker, and although we can’t see his face, we’re pretty sure he’s wearing those little stick-in-your-ear headphones, you know the type? You can see the wire dangling down from his hood. But here’s the thing – the headphones look like they get dropped during the attack, but there wasn’t any sign of them at the scene.”

Joe turned a sickly shade of mustardy-green.

“You’ve seen a tape of the actual… It’s on CCTV?” He swallowed heavily, his face hanging from his skull.

 _Shit, well done,_ Miles thought, regretting his words as they left his mouth. _He’ll be having a wobble before you know it._ “You can’t see much,” he lied.

The way that Joe squinted scowlingly indicated that he did not believe Miles, but his expression markedly lifted in gratitude.

“Wait a moment… earbuds?” he said suddenly.

Miles snorted. “Have you descended into just saying random syllables now, sir?”

Joe frowned in thought, the frozen alertness in his eyes evoking a mild form of what Miles called his ‘eureka’ moments.

“No, no. The headphones. You said you couldn’t find them at the crime scene? There’s a pair with Emerson’s things in here.” He scrabbled at the bedside cabinet, yanking open the door and gesturing at the offending objects. “Could these be the ones? Perhaps the paramedics picked them up by mistake. I don’t remember him having a pair like them.”

“Could be, I suppose,” said Miles dubiously, groping for an evidence bag. “I’ll get them checked for DNA just in case.”

Any further conversation was interrupted by the intrusive rumba of Miles’ ringtone, a sound designed by the very bass of its rhythm to infect the ear and demand attention. Mansell’s name flashed on the screen, shouting almost as loudly as the phone itself.

“Skip? Just checked those disposal records at the Whitechapel Armed Response Unit, and I don’t know if this means anything, but that bloke you’re about to interview? Don Carter? Apparently he drove the van that transported our gun from the unit to the disposal site. But the serial numbers don’t match up and there’s no record of that gun arriving at the other end. It might just be a clerical error, but…”

Mansell broke off darkly. Carter’s so-called ‘soft’ interview had just become a touch harder.

* * *

The half hour or so journey over to Peckham was conducted largely in a weighty silence, the ticking of Miles’ watch sounding thunderous. The atmosphere was taut, like a hanging pendulum gradually sinking as it slowed. Time seemed once again suspended as they slipped over the Thames. Suspended like many a tube line invariably would be that Sunday. Not that you could get a tube to Peckham anyway – and Miles certainly did not trust the Overground. The silence was broken once by Pembroke calling to advise Miles and Riley not to push Carter too hard in the interview.

“We don’t want to frighten him off. And he’s police as well, remember, so he deserves at least a little respect.”

Miles suppressed the bitter observation that, in his experience, being a police officer did not necessarily make you immune to breaking the law. And Ray Miles was not about to start cutting anyone any slack simply because of the uniform they wore.

Sergeant Don Carter struck Miles as a ratty sort of man, his pinched sallow face headlined by a rigid nose, just slightly off-centre. Mousy hair hung in greasy tendrils, framing the expanse of his forehead like a proscenium arch. By contrast, his arms were strong and muscular, as Miles supposed was natural for someone who spent their days handling heavy weaponry.

 _He looks like a weasel on steroids._ The thought popped into Miles’ head as they sat down, cups of tea in hand, to begin the interview. Miles watched, eyes narrowed, as Carter swilled the beverage around his polystyrene cup for a few seconds before knocking back a gulp, his throat contracting as he swallowed.

Riley flicked a glance at Miles, then began. “Sergeant Carter, thanks for speaking to us today. We just wanted a bit more information about your time in the Whitechapel ARU?”

Carter opened his arms, his palms faced upwards, prophet-like. “Sure. Anything I can do to help.”

Miles slapped a photograph of the gun in question onto the table. “What can you tell us about this?” he barked.

Carter leant forwards, brow furrowed, squinting at the glossy paper. “Well, it’s a Glock 17 pistol. We use them a lot in Armed Response. Umm… what else d’you want to know?”

“Nice weapon, is it? Does the job?”

Carter shifted in his seat, his fingers knitting through his hair. Miles noticed the slight iodide yellow nicotine stains around his well-chewed fingernails.

“Well, we wouldn’t use it if it didn’t do the job, would we?”

A sharp swooshing stab of something approaching anger shot through Miles, making him constrict his fingers into his fist. “Don’t get smart,” he spat.

Riley coughed into her tea. “Don,” she said, a more legato quality to her voice than Miles could manage, “may I call you Don?” Carter nodded imperceptibly. “Lovely. This gun here, this particular one, we know that you were the officer in charge when it was taken for disposal just over five years ago, and we know that you were the last officer to use it on active duty. We just want to know if you remember taking it for disposal, and what happened to it afterwards?”

“Can I see it again?” he asked, hesitantly, his fingers brushing against the serial number as he studied the image. “Oh yeah, I remember this one. It was a good weapon. Solid, you know? You work with them long enough, you get a feel for the good ones. And this was a sound bit of kit.”

“So, you might say you had a bit of a soft spot for it?”

Carter gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It was dependable, reliable. It’s a shame it had to be discontinued really, but that’s the protocol.” He twisted an s-shaped smile towards Miles. “Bureaucracy, eh?”

Miles sensed an attempt to get him on side, to win him over with the reference to coppers’ common enemies, red tape and paperwork. His hackles rose further, so that he felt that surely every hair on his head was standing to attention. He could never trust anyone who would try so hard to insinuate themself into his good books.

“So talk us through what happened to it.” Miles clasped his hands together on the desk, the shadow creating an arrow shape in the dim light.

Carter attempted an apologetic grimace. “There’s not much to tell. I would have signed it onto the van, along with the other written-off arms, then signed it off when it was accepted at the other end. After that had nothing to do with me.”

“That would be these signatures, yes?” Riley slid across two dockets, each bearing a list of serial numbers accompanied by a sequence of black scrawls.

Carter grunted an affirmative.

“You confirm, then, that this is your signature?” Riley pressed. Another nod.

“Why, then,” said Miles, a golden gleeful swelling rising from the pit of his stomach, “does this docket show the gun entering the van,” he pointed at the correct serial number, “when according to the second docket, it never arrived at the disposal unit? The serial number is nowhere to be found.”

Carter’s face paled as he scanned the paperwork. His mouth opened and closed twice, then his entire face scrunched up, his lips protruding out in a baleful pucker. “I… I can’t explain that.”

“Well, that’s too bad for you, ‘cause you’re the last person we can trace this weapon to, until someone brings it out of retirement to shoot one of my constables.” Miles voice had risen to a forte. “So you tell me what you know about this gun, or I’m going to have to ask you where you were at nine-fifteen on Friday night.”

The shock rippled over Carter’s face in waves. “I haven’t shot anyone. I mean… not outside of my job. I wouldn’t… you can’t think…?” He sank back into his chair, deflated, his straggly hair displaced nervously. “I’m not saying anything else till I get a lawyer.”

The lawyer sloped in just over twenty minutes later, citing his name as Freddie Wentworth, and immediately oozed his way to the chair beside his new-found client. His presence lent a glistening sheen to the proceedings, although he barely spoke, causing Miles immediately want to wash his hands. After a short council between Carter and Wentworth, Miles and Riley were invited to continue the interview. Any confidence that Carter had exhibited earlier was gone, a jagged shift in his demeanour leaving him jumpy. He wriggled in his seat as though he were already under restraint.

“It’s alright, Don,” soothed Riley. “If you’re not the shooter, then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you? Just tell us what you do know.” Miles knew that Riley hated playing the stereotype of the caring woman detective, but he had to admit she was damn good at it.

“Alright,” Carter exhaled, following a languid nod from Wentworth. “I’ll tell you everything I know. Inspector Reeder and me, we’ve been taking discontinued weapons and selling them on. Only one at a time, and only the ones that are still perfectly serviceable. We mostly sell them back to the Met at a reduced rate. You know, a win-win. They get a gun for a cut price, we make a bit of cash on the side. Reeder knows a few of the lads in Procurement. We just thought it seemed a shame to throw them away when there’s nothing wrong with them. Reeder helps me to forge the paperwork so no-one notices they’ve gone missing, and he takes a cut of whatever I sell them for. This gun,” he pointed shakily at the photograph, “I’ve had it lying around for ages. I only got rid of it a few days ago. Some bloke, I don’t know who he was, he said he wanted it for a project… I didn’t ask… didn’t want to know. I wouldn’t normally sell it to someone like that, but, like I say, I needed to get rid. Said his name was James Brown, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his real name. If that gun’s been used in a shooting, it’s him you need to find.”

Carter shuddered, appearing to dissolve into his chair. His thin face resembled squashed cardboard.

“I never wanted anyone to get hurt, ‘specially not a police officer. You got to believe me.”

Miles almost felt sorry for the man as he crumpled over himself, his hands clawing at the desk, broken and still.

Miles’ watch ticked on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I don't know a great deal about police procedure, except what I have gathered from countless crime dramas, so apologies if any of this wouldn't work in reality.


	7. Chapter 7

The crime scene held a different sort of menace in daylight. At night, the terror lay in the shadows, the dark crevices wherein could lie all manner of evils. In the daytime, those shadows revealed their bleak corners, and the vast emptiness was laid bare. There was nowhere left to hide. The quality of the light itself was knife blade bright, steely, full of sharp edges. A shaft of sunlight illuminated the bloodstains on the wall, transforming them from a smudgy black to copper.

Across the street, people were getting on with their day, as though there had not been a near fatal shooting just yards from where they walked. That was the most terrifying thing of all to Miles, the indifference. Did people really not care, or were they simply immune to the horrors of Whitechapel? Either way, it unnerved him.

Don Carter was at that moment sat in a holding cell back at the station, waiting to provide an E-fit for the so-called ‘James Brown’ who bought the gun from him. After giving his confession, he had become obligingly cooperative, naming names, dates and places to detail his gun racket. Miles was under no illusion that this was done from the goodness of his heart, however – it never was. A typical case of blowing up the house behind him. But Mansell was dealing with him now. Miles had stayed at the station only long enough to book in Carter and drop off Kent’s headphones at the lab. While waiting for the results, he and Riley were taking another look at the crime scene. A new day, a new sun, a new perspective. That was the hope.

“So, what are we looking for, Sarge?” asked Riley.

“I don’t know,” huffed Miles. “Something… anything. A motive, an explanation. Someone walking up to us with a big sign saying ‘I’m the shooter’ would be nice.”

“We should be so lucky,” said Riley, a wry smile on her face. “How’s the Boss bearing up?”

“Oh, you know, as well as can be expected. He seems to have stopped panicking at any rate.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “You know, I was really worried about him at first. Don’t tell anyone, but him and Kent had had a bit of a row… just before… and, well, unfinished conversations are never great in this sort of situation, are they?”

Riley winced in sympathy. “I was thinking about doing a whip-round for them,” she said, “but I wouldn’t know what to get. Perhaps a card? But then, what do you say? ‘Get well soon’ hardly seems appropriate.”

Miles grunted, gently placing a fatherly hand on Riley’s shoulder. “You’re a good girl, Meg.”

He surveyed the scene, hoping that something would jump out at him, some clue that would juggle the whole thing into place. All he could see were scraps of Police Crime Scene ribbons and a yellow notice pleading for witnesses. So far, so expected.

A middle-aged man stood reading the sign. He had a pale pinkish face crowned by a wave of strawberry blonde hair retreating into bone-white. He looked up and raised an arm towards Miles.

“Well, I’ll be… That’s a blast from the past,” gaped Miles.

The man walked towards Miles and Riley, taking the most direct route, his grey eyes fixed on them.

“Ray Miles. It’s been a while,” he said, by way of greeting.

“Will,” responded Miles. “I heard they’d let you out. How are you?”

“I feel good, actually. Nice to breathe free air again.” Will looked quizzically towards Riley. “Are you going to introduce me then?”

Miles indicated between his two companions.

“Will, this is DC Meg Riley. Riley, this is William Bousfield, an old acquaintance of mine.”

Will’s face sunk slightly, enacting offence. “Acquaintance? I drove you home from the pub more times than I care to remember. And you had me and Mary over to yours more than once.”

Miles extended a nostalgic smile. “Yeah, those were good times, weren’t they?”

A darker glint, like the bottom of a pit, appeared in Will’s eyes, just for a millisecond, before being replaced by something lighter. “I heard about what happened here. It was DC Kent, wasn’t it? That’s a bad business. How are you getting on anyway? Any suspects, any leads?”

“You know better than to ask that, Will. You know we can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

Will had always been fascinated by policing, wanting to know every detail. He had never wanted to join the force himself, but many of the PCs and PCSOs had joked that the only reason he had married Mary was to get closer to the uniform.

He held up his hands in mock capitulation. “’Course, ‘course. Better shoot off anyway. I was just heading down to the cemetery - there’s a few things I want to tell Mary about. Remember me to DI Chandler will you?” He stretched a smile that did not quite reach his eyes and walked off down the road.

Once he was out of ear-shot, Miles turned to Riley. “Poor bloke.”

“You seem to go back a long way?”

“Yeah. I knew his wife, Mary, better. She was a PCSO here for several years before she died.” “She died? How?”

“Of course, I forgot you weren’t with us then. She was one of the Ripper’s victims in the Boss’ first case. She was killed and dumped in Mitre Square, and we couldn’t prevent it. She was a good officer, and a good mate, and she didn’t deserve that. Will went a bit… you know… bonkers after that, especially when we didn’t catch the killer. Ended up setting fire to the Ripper’s council flat – he was lucky no-one got killed. He got seven years for arson. Only got released this week.”

Riley looked as though she’d seen someone kicking a puppy. “Oh the poor love.”

Miles’ eyes followed the back of Will’s coat as he faded into the distance. It was a fleece, bright red, the colour of cochineal, or blood. Kent’s bloodstains still lingered on the wall beside Miles, staring at him, glowering, demanding to know why Miles had not yet caught the person who put them there. It would take some weeks for them to fade from sight completely, and Kent’s DNA would forever be present in the stones.

Riley drew near to Miles from behind. Her flowery perfume lent a gentleness to the air. “I think we’ve got all we can from here, Skip. Let’s get back.”

Miles shuffled around, hands in pockets. “There is one thing we haven’t considered. If Kent was deliberately targeted, and it definitely looks that way, how on earth did the attacker know he’d be there that night?”

Riley squinted. “Maybe he didn’t, he just hung around the station and followed him?”

“We’ve checked all the cameras outside the station and there’s no evidence to suggest that he was there at all.” He sighed, mind whirring. This case, his worry for Joe and Kent, the desecration, violation of it all, had dampened his usual investigative enthusiasm. But, as his brain sought and found connections, the adrenaline soared back into him.

“Look, it was a break in Kent’s routine wasn’t it?” he said, excitedly. “Normally he’d go home on his bike at some unspecified point after the end of shift. This was the only night when he’d have to walk. He was going to have to get the tube, but he changed his mind. It was the only night when the attacker would have had the chance to catch him on the street. And, just by coincidence, it was the one night when the shooter happened to be on the same street at the same time. I don’t like coincidences, do you?”

“So… the attacker picked that night, and this place, specifically because… they knew where he’d be… and that he’d be on his own…walking?”

“Exactly.”

Riley’s mouth fell open. “But who could have known?”

* * *

Joe gazed lovingly at the man before him. He could say ‘lovingly’ now without fear. Since his break down (or had he in fact been mended?) the previous night, Joe felt much more optimistic. He could allow himself to believe that Emerson would recover. The nurses continued to assure him of Emerson’s progress as his stimulus responses improved, but it was more than that. He had always had a wispiness about him, a fey quality exacerbated by his pale skin, paler still due to his injuries. He could not quite explain it, but Emerson now seemed more there somehow, more present, more solid. The hair on his head was beginning to grow back, small tufts of growth appearing on his scalp, like shoots in springtime.

 _I swear, Emerson,_ Joe thought fervently, his fingers clenching into his palms, _I swear, if you get better, it’ll be a fresh start for us. There’ll be no more excuses, no more faffing about – I will spend every day loving you as you deserve. As you have always deserved._

As Joe regarded his partner, he thought back over their time together. It scared him how close it had come to never happening at all, how much was down to chance, to the right balance. A pin prick either way, and Joe would never have summoned up the courage to address his feelings, to admit them to himself let alone to Emerson. How glad he was that he had taken the chance, That Day, back when Emerson was still Kent, but, oh, so much more.

* * *

That Day (it was always capitalised in Joe’s mind), nearly two years earlier, Joe had sat in his office looking out across the Incident Room. There were no active cases to pursue, so his officers were occupying themselves with general tidying, reviewing files and the like. Or at least, the majority of his team were – Mansell was being singularly unhelpful, casually throwing scrumpled pieces of paper onto the floor for the others to collect. Usually Joe railed against such quiet patches, requiring the momentum of a case to carry him on and distract him from his swirling thoughts. But after the stresses of the previous few months, culminating with the Abrahamians case and its fallout, Joe was glad of the chance to regroup, take stock. Figure out exactly what he wanted. Though that was easier said than done.

Kent drifted past Joe’s window on his way to the kettle, capturing Joe’s eyes in his for a split second, just long enough for Joe to experience the now familiar lurch that accompanied his seeing his youngest DC, a silvery beam of light that melted his insides. Where it centred changed from day to day – sometimes it began in the base of his stomach and gravitated downwards, it was at other times a sharp pang across the chest, still others, a gurgling nausea at the back of his throat. On that particular day, it was a tickling sensation centred upon his breastbone. Joe cleared his throat firmly, redirecting his wandering attention to his desk. There was nothing to distract him there.

Kent’s voice floated from the corner of the office, just out of view, raised in mild annoyance: “Who’s nicked all the teabags?” before striding out of the Incident Room in the direction of the canteen. Joe emphatically did not watch him leave, although he fancied he felt the air dance slightly as he exited. The bruises on Emer- Kent’s face from his fight with Mansell had long since disappeared, not even a pale yellow stain remaining. Joe was thankful for that at least. It had been too hard to refrain from reaching out to caress them, rub them away, as he would with his mistakes on the whiteboards. He had had to sit on his hands for a week. He still regretted that his torn feelings had caused him to be abrupt with Kent, to use sharp words to pierce his gentle thoughts. You always hurt the one you care for most, was that the phrase?

_What the hell am I doing? I need to stop thinking like this._

Joe fixed his eyes on the expense accounts he was wading through. His hands clamped like a vice on either side of his face, preventing him from lifting his head, in the vain hope that that would better help him concentrate. To no avail. He could make no sense of what he was reading. Surely that didn’t say ‘cost of cellar door maintenance’? Figures and letters swam in front of his eyes, the individual black squiggles reorganising themselves into shapes, a curled head, a wide eye, a crooked half smile. He stared at the same page for so long that it became a blurred chaos, an absurd stream of syllables, in the same way that when a word is repeated enough times, the sound takes over and becomes meaningless. Cellar door. Sell a door. C’est l’adore. Salad or. It was a sort of meditation, Joe supposed, allowing the order to disintegrate into nothing. Perhaps some people might find that relaxing. He had already tried it, however, and it did not work. E. Mer. Son. Kent. Emer. Son Kent. Emerson. Kent. However hard he tried to break it down into composite parts, to reduce it, Emerson Kent remained Emerson Kent, with all that that signified.

 _This is bloody ridiculous,_ he thought.

This had to stop. He stood suddenly, his chair legs sounding a bright fanfare as they scraped along the floor. He pounded across the office and headed for the stairs. Before he really thought about where he was going, he was standing at the shiny, grease-sheened doors to the canteen, surveying the room for he was not quite sure what. His eyes hopped across the plastic tables, seeking, searching. A smell of stale gravy permeated through every fibre, reviving Joe’s queasiness. He thought he sensed Kent’s presence before he actually saw him, though that may have been his imagination fired by nerves and anticipation. Kent was leaning against the self-service counter, one hand clasped around a red cup of corrugated cardboard, the other pressed against his hip in what could be seen as a jaunty, debonair stance, but that Joe recognised the posture as that which Kent adopted when his back was hurting. Joe should not have known such a detail about a subordinate, if that was all that Kent was. He was not sure about that either.

Joe made his way across the canteen floor, feeling like an explorer in an alien jungle. The layout of the tables formed a curious path, full of twisting corners and narrow avenues. Joe clambered between them as he forged towards Kent. The road to El Dorado. A stranger in a strange land. Kent had read a book with that title recently. That was something else Joe should not know. As he walked, he kept his eyes fixed on the soft dark reverse of Kent’s head. Kent, unaware of his boss’ gradual approach, remained steadily facing the other way. Just as Joe had convinced himself that he was mistaken, that the young man stood ahead of him could not be Kent, the DC spun round, catching Joe’s gaze with a jolt. Did his eyes light up, his mouth surprise into a bow-shaped smile, his shoulders lean forward to mirror Joe’s?

“Sir? Is everything okay?” Kent held up his drink by way of explanation. “I’m sorry, we’d run out of tea upstairs and I was gasping. There’s only so long I can survive on biscuits alone.”

“No, that’s alright. I just needed a walk,” Joe said, inwardly shrinking, desperately trying to find a way of explaining his presence. “Though I have to say, your veins must contain more tea than anything else at the rate you get through it.”

_Damn it, he’ll know I’ve been watching._

Kent breathed out a startled laugh. “Well, that or cappuccino, sir.”

His eyes were especially beautiful with the echo of humour behind them. Beautiful? Did Joe really just use that word to describe him?

Joe inhaled excessively. “Umm… can I get that for you?” he said, pointing at the cup of tea. “I think I owe you a drink, don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“That night… after the Abrahamians. I said I’d go for a drink with you. We never did make it.”

Emerson, no, _Kent_ chewed his bottom lip, sliding it through his teeth like soft fruit. “I didn’t mean… It didn’t have to be just me, sir.”

Disappointment cut through Joe. “Oh. Well. Still, I’d like to… If you… ” He waved feebly.

“I’ve already got this myself.” Kent reddened and stared fixedly at the floor. “Thanks anyway, sir. I appreciate you offering.”                                                                                                                                       

The silence that feel between them was stagnant, heavy, like the air before a thunderstorm. Even breathing had become more of an effort, as though some tartaran punishment were preventing Joe from filling his lungs fully. For one tantalising moment, Kent looked up, his eyelashes shading the wells underneath, keeping them just out of reach of Joe’s vision.

Joe wrenched himself around, signalling the bitter end of the conversation, such as it was. “Well… er… Sorry. I’ll… see you back in the office.”

A hollow numbness had taken residence in Joe’s chest as he slunk out of the canteen. A glance at his watch told him that it was five hours till the end of the shift. Five whole hours spent in Kent’s company after that humiliating spectacle, with not even a bog-standard burglary to keep him occupied. Perhaps he could hide in the archives with Ed for a while.

Joe jumped violently as he felt a hand grip onto the crook of his elbow. “Sorry, sir.” Kent, slightly flushed, stood behind him, his arm outstretched into Joe’s personal space. “It’s just… I’m free tonight, if you want…?” He trailed off, the unspoken invitation hanging weightily between them.

Joe swallowed audibly, the storm broken, a whizzing whirlwind descending from his throat, filling him from the inside out. “Yes, that… I mean… I’d love to.”

Kent grinned. “Great. Pub then? If you’re going to buy me a drink, it might as well be something decent.”

Was that the promise of a kiss ghosting across Kent’s lips, or was that just something else in Joe’s imagination?

 

Kent was already waiting when Joe arrived at the pub that evening. He sat at a corner table at the far end of the bar, eclipsing the bright yellow wall light behind him. The corona of the bulb encompassed his head like a halo, enlightening every single strand of his wavy hair. His face took on a warmer shade as he closed his phone screen, the blue light ceasing, allowing the red-golden illumination of the pub to seep into his skin.

 _Here goes nothing,_ thought Joe, mentally making a list of potential conversation topics that did not involve work.

As it turned out, his list was redundant. The conversation flowed as freely as the Chilean Pinot Noir they shared, covering a whole range of things from books to music, politics to university, family to Kent’s flatmates.

So, how many flatmates do you have?” Joe asked.

“Three.” Kent stated. “Richard, Ben and Ailsa. I’ve known Rich and Ailsa since uni – we all sang in the chapel choir – and Ben is Ailsa’s fiancé.”

Joe’s eyebrows made a dash towards his hairline. “You were a singer?”

“Oh yes,” said Kent, proudly. “You’re looking at Tenor Dec One, 2001 to 2004. I was quite the choirboy. There might even be a couple of CDs knocking about somewhere with me on them.”

Joe snorted into his wine. The vision of Kent in gown and cassock was not what he had been expecting. “Do you still keep it up?”

Kent smirked. “Nah, not really. I used to do a bit of depping round the London churches when I first graduated, but joining the Police pretty much put paid to that. I mean, when I’m not on duty, my Sunday morning lie-ins are sacrosanct, and not in the way a vicar would like.”

Joe nodded sympathetically. He could understand what it meant to sacrifice hobbies and lifestyle for one’s career. Not that he had ever been encouraged to have much of a life outside of work.

“Plus, it’s not really the sort of music I go in for anymore,” Kent continued. “Rich still sings though. He’s a Bass in the choir at St Paul’s – does a fair bit of gigging and touring professionally as well. I should take you to one of his concerts next time he does one round here.” He cut himself off abruptly, suddenly coy. “That is… only if you… you know…”

 _Did he just invite me on a second date? Is this even a date at all?_ Joe matched Kent blush for blush.

“That would be nice,” he quickly said. “I’d like that.”

The pub was busy for a week night. Most of the glossy wooden tables were occupied, and there were clusters of locals acting for all the world as though the bar would fall down without them to hold it upright. Joe liked the place because it was one of the few in the area that did not have either a huge screen displaying football or a sound system that screeched deafening music constantly. No muzak even, just the low ostinato hum of multiple conversations, punctuated by occasional arpeggioed laughter.

Kent raised his drink to his lips, fingers cradled around the bell of the glass. His other hand lay easily on the table, his thumb and little finger synchronised in tapping out some unconscious rhythm. How had Joe never noticed his hands before? He had seen his hand _writing_ countless times, on the whiteboard, on reports, even on Christmas cards, but he had never before thought about the hands that brought those words into being. At least, not consciously. They were exquisite, enigmatic. Strong yet fragile, slender yet sinewy. A musician’s hands. Kent had not said whether he played any instrument other than singing, but Joe could imagine those fingers sprinting along a piano keyboard or curved around the neck of a cello. Gliding up and down…

“So your other flatmates, are they musicians as well?” asked Joe, dragging his mind back from where it had wandered.

Kent sniggered. “Oh no, Ben’s got a voice like a crow. They both work for Tower Hamlets Council. That’s where they met actually, a sultry look over the floor of the Planning Department. Proper office romance, that was.”

“Oh? And… how did that work out?” Joe slid his own hand an inch or two closer to Kent’s.

Kent shrugged. “Fine. It was never a big deal, really. Even when Ailsa was promoted above Ben, they made it work. They just keep their work and their personal stuff separate.”

He glanced down at the table at Joe’s incremental progress towards him.

Joe’s tongue suddenly felt too large for his mouth. He stuttered, stumbled over his words as though drunk.

“S-so… these office… rom… relationships between co-workers. You… you think they can work?”

Kent’s asymmetrical smile broadened, albeit shyly. “I guess it depends on the people involved, but I can’t see any reason why not in theory. If you go into it with your eyes wide open.”

Kent’s eyes were certainly wide open. Wide and full-pupiled. Fingertips were meeting, slotting between each other, fitting together as into a glove. All of time, all space seemed to have contracted to a single point, where their hands and eyes united. Where all was sensory. Joe felt both shrunken to a dot and enlarged beyond measurement.

Kent leant forward, drawing his chair closer to Joe. His body reflected Joe’s stance beyond any doubt.

“I did mean just me,” he whispered.

“I did hope so,” returned Joe.

Their first brush of lips sent a freezing fire down Joe’s spine. He could scarcely believe what was happening – was he truly kissing Kent, and was he kissing him back? Hands migrated from table to body, the back of the neck, the side of the face, the small of the waist. Feeling Kent move beneath, beside, before him gave Joe the courage to intensify the kiss, opening his mouth slightly in invitation. Kent needed little encouragement as their mouths pressed closer, eliminating all distance between them. He kissed like a thousand hymns sung at once, like all the psalms of joy. Joe’s soul was being magnified by this man, and he could do nothing but rejoice in his touch.

“Kent,” he gasped, pausing for breath, their foreheads inclining together.

The other man smiled, a full-faced smile this time, which spread across his whole countenance and crossed onto Joe’s. “I think perhaps it’s time you called me Emerson.”

* * *

"Excuse me, Mr Chandler?” One of the nurses looped around the doorframe, disturbing his reverie. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a phone call for you.”

Joe uncoiled himself from his seat beside Emerson and followed her down to the nurses’ station. He had barely left Emerson’s side for twenty-four hours. Entering the main ward was like surfacing from the bottom of a well, blinking into the bright lights and movement of the world above. Seeing people bustling around, doing normal things, only served to remind him that time had not stopped after all. He was emerging from a long caesura to find that the song was still singing, the pages were still turning, and life was still living.

He gingerly picked up the telephone receiver from where it lay on the desk. “Hello?” he said tentatively.

“Oh brilliant, I got ahold of you,” came Miles’ voice, crackling down the line.

“Miles, what is it?”

“This could be important, Joe. Who knew Kent was seeing Erica that night? And where they’d be?”

“Oh. Well, I did, and I suppose Mansell would have done…”

Miles interrupted. “No, I mean, who outside of us?”

“Why?” Joe could feel the urgency shooting out of Miles, even over the distance of telephone wire.

“Can’t explain it all now, but we think the attacker knew exactly where he’d be, and roughly when, and was waiting for him. They’d picked that night in particular because they knew he’d have to be walking, rather than on that bike of his, so they must have known his movements and been able to plan accordingly. So if you’ve any clue who’d have known that? Or did he write it down anywhere?”

“Only in his appointment diary… which he always keeps on him…” Joe’s speech slowed as his mind raced. “No-one could have seen that without pickpocketing it from his jacket.”

Miles sounded deflated. “You’re sure he wouldn’t have logged it anywhere else? What about on Facebook or somewhere like that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Something stirred at the back of Joe’s memory, like a waking beast. “Wait a moment.”

Recollections were nudging him, visions and echoes pirouetting in his head at random, daring him to put them in order. Muffled footsteps, a stifled yell, the jab of fingers on his wrist, tiptoeing down the hall, a slamming door, Emerson’s diary open on the table.

“It was open…” Joe murmured, half to himself. “The night of the break-in… they must have seen it then.”

At the realisation of what that would mean, that what they had thought was a random burglary had in fact been targeted, planned and prepared for the sole purpose of penetrating their life, Joe began to tremor uncontrollably.

“Sorry, Joe? I’m not following.” Miles spoke with a zig-zag of confusion.

“That’s why nothing was taken. They only wanted to find out where he’d be.”

Joe could hear the frown in Miles’ voice. “So, you think someone broke into your flat just to take a look at Kent’s diary? Seems a bit drastic, doesn’t it?

“It… it’s the only thing I can think of. I hadn’t noticed before, but he never leaves it just lying on the table like that. And it was definitely there… after. It would have said when he was meeting Erica, what time and where. Everything they’d need to know.”

Miles and Joe exhaled in unison, Joe shakily, queasily, Miles a pneumatic wheeze.

“Bloody hell,” Miles swore. “To go to that much effort… must have been really personal. Who would want him dead so badly?”

Joe choked. “I have no idea.”

He staggered back to Emerson, his mind reeling. The corridor, so straight when he had walked up it before, now pulsed and shimmered, migraine-like, before his eyes. Joe felt so unbalanced that he had to pause for a few moments, leaning against the wall to support himself. He cupped a hand over his mouth to normalise his breaths.

_Come on, pull yourself together. Focus on Emerson – he needs you. Leave the investigation to Miles._

Slipping back into the room, he was slightly put out to find a doctor leaning over Emerson, standing in the exact spot that Joe had vacated when he went to answer the telephone. He had hoped to have Emerson to himself for a while longer, to hold him, to hush him, to promise him he’d protect him.

The doctor scribbled a few notes on the chart, then stood upright smiling openly at Joe. She appeared to be built primarily out of pens. She had four or five clipped into the breast pocket of her scrubs and one more behind her left ear. Her long blonde hair was scraped back into a ponytail, and Joe could spot yet another biro knotted into the cincture created by her hair-tie.

“You’re the boyfriend, right?” she said.

Joe nodded.

“Well, then, I’ve got some good news for you.” She gestured for him to sit down, moving to the other side of the bed. “He’s no longer in a comatose state. We’ll keep him sedated for a little while longer, just to speed up recovery, but fingers crossed, we’ll be able to wake him up properly in a day or so.”

Joe had always thought that the expression ‘a weight lifted from one’s shoulders’ was just cliché. He personally had always borne his burdens until they crushed him. But, at that moment, he honestly felt lighter than he had for days, even just a few seconds before. So light that he looked upwards to check that he was not about to strike the ceiling. He wanted to hug the doctor, to dance, to sing a hallelujah. He knew he was being ridiculous, but he did not care.

From the bed, Emerson mumbled, “Don’t y’want some sir… ’s free.”

The doctor laughed at Joe’s bewildered face. “He’ll probably say a fair bit of rubbish for a while, but don’t worry – that’s a good sign. Now a nurse will be around in a bit to adjust his drips, ok?”

She left in a brisk flurry, the door clicking shut behind her.

Joe clutched Emerson’s hand in a vain attempt to ground himself. “Em? Can you hear me?”

“mmm…aswangs…”

Joe’s face cracked into the sort of smile that could not be contained by walls.

He was beginning to awaken.

* * *

Miles sat at his desk in the Incident Room, centred on his chair, the air, the space spinning around him. Mansell stood before him, his arms extended, holding a print-out from the E-fit he had acquired from Don Carter. Riley was also there, her face puckered in confusion. All Miles could bring himself to do was stare at the pale image, at the blonde hair, the pitiless, haunted eyes.

“My god,” he exclaimed. “The bastard.”

“What? Do you know who it is, Skip?” asked Mansell.

Miles said nothing, but silently handed the E-fit to Riley. Her eyes flickered over the image, widening in shock. “That’s…?”

Miles nodded grimly. The face of ‘James Brown’, the face identified by Don Carter as the person who bought the gun, the face staring up at him out of ink and paper, was none other than that of William Bousfield.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've done some research about coming out of comas. but I'm not a medical professional, so I'm sure there are bits I've got wrong. Apologies for those.  
> I can't resist a bit of fluff when it comes to these two :)


	8. Chapter 8

“Skip? There’s a problem.”

Mansell and Riley stood side by side, like twin bookends, as Miles updated the whiteboards. DCI Pembroke sat in Joe’s office, perusing through Don Parker’s statement and accompanying E-fit.

“Bousfield’s alibi checks out. CCTV shows him entering his building at half-seven that night, and he doesn’t leave again.”

Miles stopped writing mid word, an orphan tangent left inscribed on white plastic. Unfinished, unfulfilled, like this damn investigation.

“What? That can’t be. Isn’t there a back door or something?”

“Landlord says not, skip.”

“Is he wearing the same hoodie as the attacker?”

The two DCs shook their heads gravely.

“Well, that don’t prove anything. He could easily have changed. So, either he has an accomplice or he gave the cameras the slip somehow. I want to know which it is, now!” Miles had not realised that he was shouting until Riley edged her hands onto his shoulders and drew him down into a chair. Kent’s chair, as it turned out.

“Maybe you were mistaken, DS Miles.” Pembroke’s sonorous voice broke through the muggy atmosphere of the Incident Room. “Perhaps the man in the E-fit isn’t William Bousfield.”

Miles ground his teeth, his fingers clenching into claws. “I’m telling you, I’ve known Will Bousfield for nigh on fifteen years, and that picture is of him. No question. He was hanging around the crime scene this morning as well, wanting to know how the investigation was progressing. He lost it when we didn’t catch the Ripper eight years ago, so he’s got previous, and maybe motive, we know he bought the gun, so he’s got means. It all makes sense.”

“But he has an alibi,” said Pembroke, gently, with just a hint of superciliousness. “And everything else is circumstantial. We only have Don Carter’s word that this person in the E-fit had the gun at all. It’s not enough.”

Miles slammed his fists onto the desk, causing three of Kent’s neatly stored pens to skip across the surface. “It’s enough to go and have a chat with him isn’t it? To at least ask him the question? To have a look around the building to see if there’s another way he could’ve gotten out? Otherwise, what the hell are we doing?”

“Please calm down, DS Miles, or I’m going to have to send you home.”

“Why are you being so obtuse, sir? I’m sorry, but Bousfield’s the best lead we have. Even if he didn’t shoot the gun himself, he might know who did. Until we get the DNA results from the headphones…”

“The headphones that might have nothing to do with anything,” interrupted Pembroke. “You cannot let your personal feelings take over the known facts.”

“And we can’t afford to let potential leads pass us by. For Christ’s sake, it’s worth finding out, surely?”

“Miles! You will control yourself.”

Pembroke’s basso profundo resonated around the otherwise silent Incident Room, like a singer at the end of a lengthy opera. Miles almost expected an audience to start up an animated applause, but he realised with a start that he and Pembroke were alone. At some point, Riley and Mansell had slipped out of the Incident Room, unobserved. Miles was suffocated with frustration. He could feel it billowing in his chest and climbing up his airway. Why was Pembroke refusing to listen to him? From the start of the investigation, the DCI had been galloping through witnesses, through evidence, as though he were about to turn into a pumpkin, giving nothing the proper attention. He did not interview Reeder properly, when Miles knew he had been hiding something. He had wanted Miles to go easy on Carter, and now he was refusing to investigate Bousfield. It was as though he were afraid of discovering something that could not be unseen. But policing, good policing, true policing, was about being unafraid to open Pandora’s Box, whatever may lie within. Joe had taught him that. However you may be judged, you follow the evidence where it leads, no matter what. The consequences, the politics, were for others to worry about.

A tiny sting stabbed his thumb, like a miniature razor-blade. Miles drew in a quick tut of air and sucked the pad of the finger as a little scarlet trickle filtered through the skin. While sitting at Kent’s desk, he had been absent-mindedly fiddling with some of his personal items – pens, his mug, stapler et cetera – and he had caught the digit on the edge of a photograph. The image had been stuck to Kent’s computer monitor with blu-tak, but had fallen when Miles had struck the table. The page was thick and the papercut was deep. He picked up the image, taking care not to smear his blood onto the glossy paper. Seven pairs of eyes stared back at him – the whole team, Llewellyn and Buchan included, pictured at the Christmas party. The photo had been taken towards the end of the evening, when they were in various states of inebriation. Mansell had taken off his tie and knotted it around his head, waggling one end of it into Buchan’s right ear. Riley and Llewellyn stood behind them, very red of face, evidently laughing at some joke punchlined immediately before the flash of the camera. He, Miles, Joe and Kent were at the far end of the group, Miles looking absurdly like a headmaster amongst a group of rowdy schoolchildren. Though what that made Joe, Miles did not like to think. Joe was positioned to Miles’ left with Kent crouched in front. His right hand, presumably the reason why Kent had this particular photograph on display, rested on the arc between Kent’s shoulder and neck, his long fingers draped over the collarbone. An innocent, yet altogether unmistakeable, intimacy. Miles chuckled to see that his own eyes were directed towards this act of tenderness, a strangely proud look upon his face.

He carefully pinned the photo back onto the right of the computer screen and breathed deeply. “I’m sorry if I lost my temper, sir. I may have let the personal nature of this case take over a bit, and for that I’m sorry. But my point still stands. We would be remiss if we did not interview Bousfield and interrogate his alibi. And if he’s innocent, then I shall be the first to say so.”

Pembroke turned to look at Miles. His face was stern, as hard as a wooden door and as closed. “You are right, of course, Miles. We must talk to Bousfield and have him take part in an identity parade. But what I am concerned about, what I will not have, is that this become more personal than it already needs to be. I would rather you did not investigate Bousfield – you know him too well and you cannot be impartial regarding his guilt or innocence. Not to mention your relationship with the victim and DI Chandler.”

Miles spluttered. “ _My_ … relationship? We’re all close – the whole team, look.” He pointed vigorously at Kent’s photograph, still clinging to the computer monitor. “We work well together. You don’t get that without forming tight bonds. I mean, Mansell’s practically Kent’s brother-in-law, and Riley’s the mother hen to us all, but you’re not questioning their relationships.”

“Even so,” said Pembroke, in a voice that signalled the end of the conversation. “You shall not be coming with us to interview Bousfield this afternoon. Chase up with forensics if you want to be helpful.”

Further argument was clearly useless, and Miles knew it. His deferential ‘Yes sir’, though, concealed a rising tide of weariness and exasperation, tinged with something iron-like, heavy, black and brooding.

* * *

If one were to make a list of the best views over London, the roof of Whitechapel Police Station would not rank particularly highly. Nonetheless, the location had its charms, not least if a clear head was desirable. Miles had often thought so. Pembroke, Mansell and Riley had been gone nearly two hours, and all he had to occupy himself was waiting for the DNA results from the headphones. Llewellyn assured him they would be ready shortly. The air so many floors up was crisp, brittle, like thin glass blown almost to breaking point. If he looked down, he could see the spot where Kent usually chose to have a cry, when the cases got too much for him. He had done a lot less of that since he and Joe had become an item, but the odd occasion still arose when Kent’s chair would howl backwards and the glass doors to the Incident Room rumble shut behind his fleeing figure. How the tables were turned. Kent was not the one crying now. Of course, Miles never cried, not in car parks, nor on roofs nor anywhere else. No, the water running from his eyes was from the bitter winter wind, so much more unkind when perched on a pinnacle. Or so he told himself. A gust of air whistled through the railings like an eerie choir.

The rattling approach of footsteps drew Miles towards the stairwell just in time to see Caroline Llewellyn wrench herself to the top.

“What you doing all the way up here, Ray?” she asked, concernedly.

He twisted his lips into an odd grimace. “Nothing. Just… thinking.”

“Thinking? You do too much of that and you’ll turn into DI Chandler,” she laughed hesitantly. “And I don’t think Whitechapel could cope with two of him.”

“Oh I don’t know.” Miles drove his wrist across his eyes firmly. “We get enough copycat criminals round here. A copycat Chandler might balance it out a bit.” He smiled weakly.

“Well, here’s something else for you to think about. The DNA from the headphones belongs to William Bousfield. He has definitely worn them himself.”

The relief Miles felt had an ugliness to it, a proud conceitedness at having been proven right. His eyes flashed gleefully as he stabbed Mansell’s number into his phone.

“I’ve got him. I’ve bloody got him.” Miles could not keep the triumphalist note from his voice, an angry trumpet sounding a fanfare. “D-N-A.” He punched out those three letters with a percussionist’s punctuation.

“We’ve got him too,” replied Mansell, sounding equally smug. “We’re bringing him in. Done and dusted and home in time for tea, right Riley?” His voice decrescendoed as he seemingly turned away from the speaker to address his colleague.

“Something like that, yes,” came Riley’s mellifluous tones, quiet and echoey from distance. “You were right, Skip, there was a back door. His alibi was shot to pieces.”

“Tell me everything you know,” ordered Miles.

As Mansell and Riley, in antiphon, talked Miles through the evidence they had gathered against Bousfield, Miles sank heavily to the ground. His joints creaked in unison. He felt old, aged. Scratched and stretched like a disc damaged from overuse. He had not felt so worn since that witch, Louise Iver, had got her claws deep into his mind. He had heard neither sight nor sound from her since the Abrahamians, and he dared to hope that she had also been killed in the crash. But the scars never leave you. Every so often a case would come along that inverted everything. Transposed it to an unfamiliar key, full of dark and strange notes and curious enharmonics. Made Miles feel that he could never find his way to the end. This case should not have been like that. There was nothing spooky or unexplainable about it. If it had not been Kent… But it had been Kent, and it was Bousfield who had pulled the trigger. Will Bousfield, a man Miles had known and trusted. Everything was twisted out of shape.

Miles and Riley, they explained, had gone with Pembroke to Bousfield’s flat, to interview him and the landlord of the building. While Pembroke spoke to Bousfield, they had been given a tour of the building, showing that, indeed, the front door was the only usable egress. That was aside from the old door to the basement, which the landlord assured them had not been used in years, and was kept locked shut by an ancient padlock, rusted and warped with age. Even he had lost the key to it.

“Can we see the door all the same?” Riley had asked, in a manner that was not really a question.

“Yes, o-ok,” stumbled the landlord. “But there’s nothing down there. No-one’s been down there in years.”

The door itself had been just as battered as they had been led to believe. Plasticky paint of a blackish-greenish hue was peeling from the frame, leaving small shards on the floor like a trail of breadcrumbs. The padlock, however, had been a shining bronze, clearly a new fixture.

“Someone’s changed the locks,” Mansell had said, a significant look passing between himself and Riley. “Do you have some bolt-cutters?”

Plunging down into the bowels of the building had been, Riley said, like climbing into someone’s grave. The air was saturated with dust, still and stagnant, and a chill had risen up from the small of her back as though long icy fingers were slowly making their way towards her neck. The basement below was abandoned, the only sign that anyone had been down there being the half-crescent traced into the filthy floor indicating that a door leading outside had recently been opened. That, along with a scramble of footprints leading from the stairwell to said door.

“What’s out there?” Riley had asked.

“Just the place out back where we used to keep the bins,” the landlord had replied, his face ghostly pale in the dim light.

Mansell had heaved the door open with a thunderous contra-bass groan that rumbled throughout the cramped basement at such a frequency that it made Riley feel slightly sick. They had stepped out into a dingy back yard, the sole occupant of which was a tarnished and battered skip.

“And guess what was in the skip, Skip.” Mansell was clearly in a good enough humour to be making rubbish jokes again.

“Surprise me,” said Miles, drily.

“We’ve only gone and got ourselves a murder weapon, plus what looks like a load of burnt clothing.”

All the breath left Miles’ body at once. He inhaled with a gasp, a frozen suspended gulp of frigid air turning his lungs to ice. “You… you’re sure it’s the same gun?” he coughed.

“Pretty sure. It looks exactly like it. Ballistics will confirm.”

“So,” summed up Riley. “Assuming it’s the same, we can place the murder weapon in Bousfield’s possession. That with the E-fit of him buying it… well…”

She had no need to complete her sentence. This new evidence would be enough to arrest Bousfield and bring him in for questioning, and get a warrant to search his rooms. It was possibly enough to charge him.

“We need to prove it was him who changed the padlock,” said Miles.

“Already done, Sarge,” Riley replied, her voice warbling with success. “A locksmith around the corner, ‘W. B. Field & Sons’, ID’d Bousfield as having bought a new padlock first thing Saturday morning. The owner remembered him clearly because he was waiting outside at opening time and was in and out in double quick time. Rude, too, he said.”

Rude, yes, Bousfield had often demonstrated an abruptness, which could be taken as rudeness, when under pressure. Miles remembered when he had formally identified Mary’s body, his snapped out ‘Yes, that’s her’, his insistence that he be shown the full extent of her injuries. Him standing over her apparently devoid of emotion, but for the thinning of his lips and the fleeting something withdrawing from his eyes. Perhaps Miles’ memory was playing tricks on him, but he fancied he could pinpoint the exact moment when the light of his eyes faded into a dull vacuum. Just after Llewellyn handed him Mary’s blood-cleansed police lanyard, just before her face disappeared beneath the folds of the clinical sheet. Looking back, Miles was tempted to say that Will had also died that day, at least the Will Bousfield he knew. The human part of him had diminished, contracted to a hard little stone, choking the life out of him. He had never cried, not once.

By the time Bousfield had been booked in and made ready for an interview under caution, Miles had descended from the roof, warming the winter out of himself. The contrast between the glacial chill outside and the relative warmth of the Incident Room lit a new fire inside of him. A flame of determination so yellow-bright that Pembroke did not deny him his wish to sit in on the interview.

“William Bousfield, you are here under arrest for the attempted murder of Detective Constable Emerson Kent. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention something which you later rely on in court. Do you understand the caution?”

“Yes, I understand the terms of my arrest,” said Bousfield with deliberation. A humourless staccato laugh coughed out of him. “It took you long enough. But then, you lot always were slow off the mark.”

His upper lip coiled into a leer as he looked at Miles and Pembroke with baleful glee. “What, you think I’m going to deny it? Try to ‘prove my innocence’?” The stress he placed on those last three words was heavy and mocking, the cynicism only exacerbated by the air quotes he placed around them with his twitching fingers. “Why would I waste my time doing that?”

“Is this a confession then, Will?” asked Miles, leaning forwards.

Bousfield laughed again with a rickety snigger. “Oh you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me signing another bit of paper saying just what you need to make all your lives easier.”

His voice rose up and down like a leaping melody. Jocularity mingled with menace to create a nightmarish song.

Miles raised his eyebrows, crinkling his forehead in a way he hoped was intimidating.

“Tell you what,” continued Bousfield, his almost colourless eyes narrowing wolfishly. “I’ll talk. For old times’ sake. I’ll confess everything, Ray, my little ray of sunshine. I’ll even tell you why if you want. I’m not mad, you see, I had perfectly logical reasons for my actions. Thought through, you know, planned. Just a business transaction. But I’ll only speak to DI Chandler.”

* * *

Joe faltered outside the Interview suite, desire for knowledge battling with his need to be at the hospital. With Emerson improving by the hour, every second away from him felt like he was being robbed. On the other hand, he had the opportunity to look Emerson’s attacker in the eyes and ask him why, and he could not pass that up.

The last time he had been in the station, it had been just another shift. He felt out of place, as though the station had altered around him, leaving him a step out, slightly shabbier than before. His appearance was certainly much more unkempt than he would normally allow – his shirt, though fairly clean, was creased through oversitting, his top button was undone. His silk tie was lying, he believed, somewhere under a chair in the hospital. The place, and himself within it, felt so unfamiliar that he could have been just a visitor. He extended his arm towards the door handle, but he could not quite bring himself to open the door.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to, you know.” Miles appeared at his right side. “We’ve already got enough to charge him with – we don’t need a written confession.”

“Yes… no… I’m sure,” Joe stammered. “I need to know why. Just give me a few seconds to prepare myself and I’ll be fine.”

He inhaled so deeply that he felt a blue-grey faintness bubbling into his head. Pulling the door open, he would have stumbled, had it not been for Miles, who steadied him as they entered the room together.

“Ah, good afternoon DI Chandler.” Bousfield sat alone. “It is still DI isn’t it? Yes, I remember, it was such a shame, you falling off your fast track.” The last consonant cracked from his mouth like a whip.

Joe inclined his head with a miniscule contraction. Miles had warned him not to let Bousfield get into his head, or he would stay there, sat in his brain like a recalcitrant toad, a warty parasite. Joe could create enough mental negativity all by himself, without help.

“I’m told you wanted to speak to me,” Joe said steadily. “I haven’t much time, so if you would, please.”

Bousfield curled his mouth in an approximation of a smile. “You knew my wife, didn’t you DI Chandler? She knew you anyway. I remember what she said when she first met you – ‘You should have seen him, Will,’ she said ‘all dressed up like a penguin with a stick up its arse.’ She had a turn of phrase, my Mary, didn’t she?”

Bousfield’s voice, previously harsh and gritty, became smoothed, its sharp fragments sieved out.

“She was the best out of the lot of you. I heard how you ran out when you first saw Cathy Lane’s body. Nearly threw up, I was told. Mary, though, stayed with her in her dying moments. That took guts,” Bousfield paused, an uncannily lucid strain of madness glittering in his eyes, “though Cathy Lane didn’t have her guts anymore, did she?”

He cackled hysterically, throwing his head back so far that Joe could see his epiglottis.

Joe shuffled in his seat, uncomfortably impatient to hear what the man had to say for himself.

“Would you get to the point, please, Mr Bousfield? Why did you shoot my…”

“Because he _was_ _yours_ , DI Chandler. The one person you cared about most. You see, when Mary died, I lost everything. My rock, my soulmate, my best friend. My whole life. She made it worth getting up in the morning, with her gentleness and her fun and her wit and her… her… wholeness. And when she died, she just went, disappeared, like she was never here. You know, I _envied_ you, DI Chandler. You didn’t have anyone to love, so you couldn’t have your heart scratched out by someone else’s blade. I thought you’d never know the gaping loss I felt, the hollowness that won’t ever be filled.

So imagine my shock when I heard you’d shacked up with DC Kent, your little puppy dog. You had this perfect little life, didn’t you, playing happy families. You’d taken my life. Mine and Mary’s – we should’ve had that. But you failed to protect her and you failed to even catch the man who killed her. I blamed him, to start with – that’s why I set fire to his flat. But it’s you I blame now. You, with your targets and your courses, you couldn’t even save my Mary. So how dare you be happy? How dare you get what you want? How dare you live your life all cosy with your little boyfriend? That’s why. I did it all for Mary. She’d be proud, I think, finally getting justice. _That’s_ why.”

Joe struggled to keep his voice from fracturing. “How… how long had you been planning this? How did you know where he’d be that night?”

Bousfield sparkled with barely suppressed joy. Not a happy joy, but a cruel exultation shining darkly. Every word he pronounced with relish, as though he tasted each syllable before spitting it out.

“That was easy, _so_ easy. I learnt everything there is to know about lock-picking inside, so getting into your flat was a doddle. And Kent had just left his schedule written out for me to find. As if he wanted me to have it. Sure, I had to go through his pockets, but really it was obvious. Some old police contacts pointed me in the direction of someone with a gun for sale. I think you can probably imagine the rest. I just waited for that sister of his to go after they’d been to the pub, and watched for the opportune moment. Then I shot him. Oh, it felt so good, seeing the look of terror in his face just before I pulled the trigger. Oh yes, and the confusion. I think that was the best bit. He had no idea what was happening. He didn’t even try to fight back, just begged and pleaded.” Bousfield adopted a high pitched whine in hideous impersonation. “‘Please don’t hurt me’. He whimpered like a schoolgirl. Pathetic. Hardly a man at all - he rolled over like a little fucking bitch.” 

Whatever was holding Joe back suddenly snapped with a crack of red-black fury. Everything blurred. Joe’s hands were pummelling Bousfield’s shoulders, his chest, other hands from behind were pulling Joe back. A whirling, crashing, slamming of doors. Chest screaming, a falsetto alarm shrieking somewhere around him. Joe had never known rage like it. He saw not just red, but every colour on the spectrum, from a red-orange eruption to the deepest indigo-violet of murderous wrath. He felt a ragged throbbing in his throat and he realised that he was shouting, swearing, using the worst language that he knew, words he didn’t even know he knew. Primal, guttural, instinctive, hypnotic.

“Joe! Sir.”

Arms pulling him out of the room, his legs tripping behind him, limbs begging to stay but not wanting to be left behind. He could tell that he was moving, or being moved, but he was completely unaware of the direction or his surroundings. He could not even say for sure whether he was walking forwards, backwards, or sinking down into the earth. His stomach took a giant silvery leap into his chest before sinking into his toes. Perhaps he was in a lift? For what felt like hours, although it might have been only a few minutes, Joe was aware of nothing but the blood pumping redly in his ears, a rushing sound like a knife being drawn from a sheath again and again and again.

As he came to, he became aware that he was sitting at a desk in the Incident Room, Miles and Pembroke nearby having a forceful conversation at an extreme dynamic. He had thought the shouting he could hear was simply the echoes of his own loss of control, but no. Miles was as incensed as he had seen him, angrier than he had ever been with Joe, even in their early days. Pembroke’s face had gone a deep mauve, like an aubergine about to explode.

“I should arrest DI Chandler for assault,” Pembroke bellowed.

“Oh come on, he hardly touched him. And if he hadn’t, I bloody would have.”

“He’s just left us wide open for accusations of intimidation, forcing a confession, police brutality. I could go on. The whole case could fall apart because of this!”

“Did you not hear him, sir? Bousfield? He confessed everything of his own accord long before Joe lost it. No-one with any sense will say that Joe forced his confession. In fact, I reckon they’ll be amazed that he held off as long as he did.”

“That doesn’t matter Miles.” Pembroke paced erratically, his fists waving as though he were a second-rate conductor. “A good defence barrister will make mincemeat out of us for it.”

“And with Don Carter and Reeder’s testimonies, plus if we can find those guys in Procurement who were buying the stolen guns in the first place, we might be able to determine who told Bousfield about Carter. We’ll have so much evidence against him that any jury’d find him guilty, even if we can’t use the confession. And we can pull in all those bent coppers while we’re at it.”

“What are you talking about?” Pembroke stopped suddenly, just shy of the desk where Joe was sitting. “We’re not pursuing a case against Inspector Reeder or any officer other than Don Carter. We can’t afford for the name of the Police to be dragged through more scandal. If the public heard that there was illegal gun running within the walls of the Metropolitan Police… it would be a disaster. The whole structure, all of our good work, would come crashing down. I shall not let that happen, Miles, and neither shall you.”

Joe was finding it difficult to keep up with the argument. Miles threw him a look that said ‘I’ll explain everything later,’ but he had heard the words ‘bent coppers’ and that was enough. They had been through this all before, with DCI Cazenove and the other police on the Krays’ payroll. Those officers, supposedly there to enforce the law and protect the public, had been responsible for burgling the Incident Room when Emerson was unable to defend it or himself. Emerson may prefer to forget it, but Joe could not. No, he would never forgive what those corrupt police officers had done to them – to the team, to McCormack, to Emerson. What they had made him believe. He would not forgive them, because he still could not forgive himself.

He stood, shakily. “Excuse me, DCI Pembroke, I realise I’m not part of this investigation, but I’m a little confused. If you have evidence which implicates anyone in illegal behaviour, you have a duty as a police officer to pursue it, no matter who they are, how high up. And before you ask, I include myself in that. Go ahead and arrest me if you wish.”

He stretched his right hand to form a star. A faint greyish blue was already forming over the knuckles. Closing his eyes, he brushed the fingers of his left hand over the bruised flesh to soothe it, imagining just for a moment that it was Emerson’s.

Pembroke looked at him derisively. “You really have no idea, do you Chandler? No wonder your reputation is so poor. You’ve got to choose your battles, make sure you only take on the ones you know you can win. That’s been your problem all along – you wanted the big cases, but you overextended yourself every time, so you never brought a case to court. It’s no good just arresting people just because you think you have some evidence against them. You have to think of the greater good.”

Pembroke turned to Miles. “Pursuing and charging Reeder and his contacts is not an operational priority. Don Carter will be charged with stealing and supplying illegal arms – without him, the scheme will soon cease with a minimum of fuss. Reeder won’t get away with it either, don’t worry. He’ll be quietly demoted and moved to a less… sensitive … section of the force.”

The look of disgust on Miles’ face mirrored the sinking churning in Joe’s stomach.

“So, that’s it then,” spat Miles. “You’ve got your scapegoat, so case closed?”

Pembroke looked almost affronted. “We’re also charging DC Kent’s attacker, and barring any more contretemps between you and Bousfield, we ought to be able to send him down. Isn’t that what you both wanted?”

Miles and Joe stared at Pembroke in disbelief for several heartbeats. After a frozen moment, Miles picked up his coat from the back of his chair. The movement created a small draught which blew three or four pieces of paper onto the cold floor. He did not bother to pick them up.

“Well, I’m out,” he said flatly. “Come on, Joe. I’ll drive you back to the hospital.”

Wordlessly, Joe followed his friend out of the office. As they exited, he looked back towards the desk in the inner office, _his_ office, and wondered whether he would ever truly belong there.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all are still enjoying it. There are probably two more chapters to come.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains dangerous levels of fluff.

The corridors of the Royal London Hospital Intensive Care Unit had become a temporary art gallery for the month of February, exhibiting paintings and photographs by local artists. Bright colours were awash on the usually ash-coloured walls, lending the place a summery air quite out place with the endless stringy grey drizzle that could be seen through the windows. In the pictures, birds swooped noiselessly out of an azure sky, children gambolled with silent shrieks in green gardens, which were filled with flowers of every hue. Limestone churches glowed in golden sunlight while burgundy-clad choirboys sang a soundless psalm. In short, a veritable feast for the eyes of all that was vivid, vibrant and voiceless in the world outside the hospital’s drab walls. Illustrations of life so very far removed from the reality of life in the ICU – a reality replete with the lurid red of blood tests, the screaming neon shades of heart monitors, the muffled pastels of the well-trod floors.

Joe found them all rather comforting. Since the case had closed, he had had nothing to keep his mind occupied throughout Emerson’s gradual, painstaking recovery. The cheery scenes portrayed nothing Joe had ever seen in the hospital, or in the whole of Whitechapel for that matter. They were like an imaginary world only found in children’s books, or in heavily photoshopped travel magazines. But that was the point of them, wasn’t it? Aspiration – so that you could at least pretend, for a moment, that ‘once this is all over’ you would take long walks in the country, having quiet adventures which would always end well, with a pint and a comfortable bed. Erica, however, an artist herself, as Joe kept forgetting, refused to take them in the spirit in which they were given, and spent a lot of time critiquing the perspective, or the form, or how the particular way the bird’s wing was drawn was symbolic of… something. It was her way of coping, Joe assumed, and, while a little obnoxious, it was probably healthier than Joe’s typical methods. Miles had brought him a further four tubs of tiger balm since he got through the last two in about five seconds flat. Or so it had felt.

He had had a lot of time over the past three weeks to learn about Emerson’s recovery process, so he had been prepared for his long slow crawl back to life since coming out of the coma. He had known, academically, to expect Emerson to be disorientated, distressed and confused – all the leaflets provided by the hospital had explained how regaining consciousness following a traumatic head injury was a difficult process. But nothing could have readied him for feeling so helpless at the inconsistency of Emerson’s progress, struggling forwards then plunging backwards in a cruel see-saw. Moments of awareness, where he would raise his leg or pinch a finger on request, followed by hours or even days of inertia. As the wakeful moments became more frequent, his suffering only appeared to increase, as he lashed out and cried in deep-throated agony as the medics tested his responses. Broken mumblings accompanied the questions the nurses asked, ranging from confused but semi-cogent sentences to incomprehensible murmurs.

The worst moment, for Joe, had come a couple of days earlier when Emerson had scratched feverishly and frenziedly at the drip line inserted into the back of his hand, as though trying to pick it off like a scab. Joe desperately enveloped Emerson’s hands within his to stop him from hurting himself, lulling whispers to calm him down. Emerson had looked directly at him, and for one marvellous heart-stopping moment, he thought he saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. But that was rapidly, far, far too rapidly, followed by fear. It travelled across his irises direct to the centre of his pupils, the animalistic terror of a cornered wolf. A rending, grief-ridden howl ripped from his throat, limbs flaying in all directions as though Emerson were battling an invisible assailant. As Joe tried to pacify him, his fingernails tore down Joe’s arm in a swift movement, shredding the skin into red and white stripes, which swelled and leached down his wrist and onto the formerly crisp white sheet. It was worse than the effects of any of Emerson’s nightmares and there was no safe wakening. No opportunity to hold him close and hush him until the spectres dissolved.

A rushing of nurses quickly anaesthetised him and his ragged movements slowed, slackened, his eyes bowed shut, his breathing steadied. But what still tormented him beneath the surface, Joe could not guess. No, Joe had not been prepared for the fear and pain of watching the man he loved trapped inside his own body, unable to escape his demons in his head. Joe knew all about demons – hundreds writhed within him every day.

The nurse had told him to talk to Emerson as the sedation finally wore off.

“Let him know what’s been going on while he’s been away. Tell him stories, whatever you can think of. It’ll help him to fix a time and a place when he finally does come round.”

But what to say? Joe had no news to tell him – he had hardly left the hospital in a month. Since Emerson had started to have relatively normal sleep-wake cycles, Joe had felt he could afford to go home to bed for a few hours a night. But only a few. He would leave at around half midnight and be back at the hospital again for five a.m. He had not seen their flat in daylight since before Emerson was shot. He only knew it was still standing because, well, he must have slept somewhere last night. And he was clean, so he had had a shower. His wrist was scented with his own herbal body wash. And Riley would have said something if the flat had disappeared when she went round to check on the post for him. So nothing to report there.

A nurse strode past the window with a harassed glance at her watch. It was funny, Joe had stopped noticing the time passing, at least at the level of seconds and minutes. He measured it by the amount Emerson’s hair had grown back, or the space between his breaths, or how cold Joe’s tea got before he remembered that he had it. It was strange to see someone else still tied to the tyranny of the clock.

“I think the nurses are getting a bit fed up with me,” admitted Joe to the sleeping man in front of him. “I’ve not been sticking to their visiting hours. I think they only let me stay because Miles has charmed them into it or something. He said he’d pop by later, if he gets a chance, but he’s quite busy with tying up your case. Did I tell you we’ve got him – the one who did this to you? He’s pleading guilty, apparently, so you won’t have to go to court.” He exhaled with a quasi-humorous sniff. “Not that I’ll be letting you go anywhere for a while, not without an armed guard or something. I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall at _that_ requisition meeting… You won’t mind me fussing a bit, will you? Just until you’re properly better. The Commander has said I can have as much time off as I need. I never thought I’d be glad to hear him say that. And I think Miles is enjoying running the department again, especially now that DCI Pembroke has gone back to his old unit. I never like to speak ill of a colleague, but if I start acting like him you will tell me, won’t you? Putting statistics before what’s right – that’s not what I joined the Police for.”

Joe crossed and uncrossed his legs to aid his circulation. His right leg was beginning to feel heavy and stiff, like a wellington boot filled with swiftly solidifying cement. “Anyway, Miles has passed everything on to the anti-corruption unit at AC-12. A DI Matthew Cottan said he’d take a look at the files on Reeder and his contacts, so hopefully there’ll be some movement there soon.”

They said it would take a little while for Emerson to emerge from his drugged sleep. Joe wondered how it would be – would he come back suddenly, gasping to life like a survivor of drowning, or would it be incremental steps, a twitch of a fingertip here, the compression of an eyelid there?

Eventually, there was a rustling and shift of sheets upon the bed, and a distant, stretching hum tuned to a major third. Joe’s insides twisted in anticipation as he silently watched Emerson shrug himself back into his body, pore by pore, muscle by muscle. He almost did not dare look as Emerson’s eyes opened and sought out his. If Emerson were to have another terrible hallucination after looking at him, he did not think he could bear it. Eventually, he chanced a glance at Emerson’s face. The relief was palpable, a physical heat soaking through him, as he saw familiarity, real recognition, sitting there. His gaze was wobbly, not fully focussed, but positively, unquestionably Emerson.

Joe felt the faint pressure of Emerson’s fingers curling around his. An urge to pull the younger man to him swept over him, to crush their lips, their arms, their bodies together, and never be unfused. Only the pallor of Emerson’s thin frame held him back for fear of breaking or bruising him. Joe contented himself with translating all his emotion, his gladness, his desire to touch into returning Emerson’s hand clasp with as much force as he dared.

He glistened with a wet smile. “Hello, you.”

* * *

Emerson battled his way into consciousness as though he were emerging from the bottom of a deep ocean or well. Whiteness swirled in a blurry haze, like a whooping whirligig. This had happened before, but he had never caught a proper feeling for his surroundings before sinking back into darkness again.

He thought he remembered wrestling with a snake that was trying to bite the back of his hand, before a calming familiar voice had gently soothed him, saying ‘Shh Em, don’t pull your drip line out.’ He knew that voice, he trusted it, but he could not quite place it. It felt safe, like coming home after a long journey. But then, like a spiteful joke, the voice had transmogrified into something thick and strange. A frightening echo engulfed him, as though he were trapped inside the voice, only it was no longer the reassuring voice he knew, but a vicious croak, harsh as a raven’s. He saw the blue sky, but eclipsed and darkened by a heavy oppression. The shadow grew and split into two twin bodies, broad and menacing. As they drew nearer, they became clearer, and Emerson had screamed as he recognised the faces that had haunted his nightmares for six years, phantoms formed out of shade stronger than flesh.

“If you won’t shut your mouth, we’ll shut it for you,” he heard in a voice not of human speech.

His scars seared in a white-hot burning as he vainly tried to fight them away, kicking, scratching, wrestling. All to no avail. The Krays had reached for his throat, fingers grasping like greedy anemones – he had given one last fitful, useless struggle before darkness overtook him.

He wriggled free of the morphine bonds holding him under and wrenched his eyes open. The drugs evidently had not completely left his system as he came to, his surroundings taking a few moments to catch up with him. He felt translucent and unstable, like a balloon about to burst. A body glided into his vision, a tall golden figure with eyes shining like the blue end of a rainbow. Emerson felt himself fall into those eyes, tumbling and turning until he had no idea which was up or down. He gripped onto the closest thing to hand – strong fingers squeezed back.

The golden body spoke. “Hello, you.”

Who was You? Was _he_ You? He was sure he remembered being called Emerson, or was it Kent? But the golden man spoke with such authority, he must know. He shimmered as though the very air itself were vibrating.

“Are… are you an angel?” asked Emerson.

The man laughed melodiously. “No. It’s me, Joe.”

Joe? Emerson’s head pounded, his eyes swam. Of course, he remembered.

“Joe,” he sighed giddily. “The people in the sewer, they _said_ you were an angel.”

It was some days later, so he was told, before he was finally lucid enough to hold a proper conversation. His morphine-induced visions had kept Joe entertained and worried by turns, as Emerson introduced him to Dame Judi Dench (his heart monitor), who had apparently come to visit him, then burst into childish, inconsolable floods of tears because the room was spinning and he ‘didn’t like the rollercoaster anymore.’

But at last, after having been largely unconscious for nearly a month, Emerson was feeling much more like his old self. There was still a way to go, of course – a dull ache rose in his ribs each time he inhaled and his head felt as though it had been filled with pebbles and used as a baby’s rattle. As he sat in his hospital bed, he was all but convinced that he had three arms, until one of them, the one with deep scratch marks gouged into it, left its resting place on his middle, ascended to pinch the bridge of Joe’s nose and tilled its fingers through his hair.

“It was a year ago today,” said Joe suddenly, presumably at the end of a silent trail of thought in his head.

“What was?” asked Emerson.

“When you told me that you loved me.”

“You remember the exact date?”

Joe shrugged embarrassedly, before sinking back into thought. Emerson had always enjoyed watching Joe thinking. Not the overthinking, the spinning out of control type of thinking which forewarned of a stress attack. But his measured, methodical, peaceful ruminating – _that_ was delightful to watch. His entire body would inhabit a tranquil stillness, with only small, barely visible, movements marking the precision of his thoughts. The tick-tock of his foot upon the chair legs, the tapping wave of his fingers over his cheek, the blinking of his eyes in some rhythmic morse code. Emerson found it nearly as hypnotic as watching him undulate in sleep.

Of course, this type of contemplation only usually took place when Joe needed to settle something in his mind. Emerson felt sure he would shortly find out what that was.

“When you were… you know… in the coma, could you hear anything going on around you? Me, for instance?” Joe spoke casually, but there was something about the bearing of his shoulders that suggested otherwise.

Most of what Emerson could remember of that time was blank nothingness, but a nothingness that had physical form and shape. As though he were trapped inside a hole more solid than its surroundings. He remembered struggling against the concrete void, wondering where he was and what was happening. Then, later, glimmers of sensation, just mere snatches of life beyond. Soft fingers caressing his forehead, his hands, lips meeting his lips in a fleeting kiss. Was there a bit of juvenile giggling while he was having a bed bath? Words too, indistinct, heard as though they came from the other end of a long curved tube. ‘Make him happy, don’t leave me, respond to pain, I wish, I love…’ He could not be sure, though, whether what he thought he had heard had been real or not. The distortion was too great.

“There were bits and pieces. Nothing very specific though. Why?”

Joe’s face drooped faintly, the corners of his mouth descending, its m shape gaining an extra curve.

“Oh, no reason,” he said, a disappointed fall to his voice. “There were just a few things I said to you. Things I hoped maybe you had…”

The effort of remembering was making Emerson’s sore head worse. It throbbed insistently, as though an enthusiastic drummer had taken up residence in his brain. He must have winced without realising, his body still slightly beyond control of his mind, for Joe broke off speaking and immediately gravitated forward, his eyes bright with concern. Joe pawed at him like a rescue dog, feeling his pulse, his brow, the side of his head.

“Stop fussing, Joe, it’s just a headache,” said Emerson, feigning exasperation, though in actuality he quite liked the way that Joe was clucking over him. It made him feel safe, loved. It drew him further out of the depths of unconsciousness that he had only recently escaped, and gave him form. Joe was rebuilding him, touch by touch.

The older man looked sidelong at Emerson, bent to an awkward angle. “I know, but just let me look after you. Please. I felt so helpless over the last weeks, not being able to do anything. All I could do was sit and watch. I spoke to you, you know, thinking maybe you could hear me and me talking would help. But apparently not. Seems like I was just a spare part, getting in the way.”

There was a bitter edge to Joe’s voice as his hands tugged jerkily at his hair. He looked exhausted, his hair askew, complexion the colour of porridge. While Emerson had been unconscious, the Joe of straight lines and right angles that he knew had been replaced by this rumpled, weary man, all crooked edges and curves. Emerson almost preferred it (Joe was softer somehow, calmer) but for the anxiety in his eyes that had still not fully drained away. Eyes that spoke of weeks of pain and sleeplessness. A few added lines had snuck onto his face, the signature of stress signed as a permanent reminder. An unbreakable contract engraved on flesh.

Emerson extended his arm towards Joe, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes still affixed to him. His fingers danced a slow waltz on his cheek, feeling the bristle of unshaven skin beneath them. Joe choked with a tuneless sob and clutched at Emerson’s hand with both of his own like a lifeline, kissing it hard, as though drawing breath from it.

“Joe,” said Emerson, gently. “It’s okay. _I’m_ okay. I’m here.”

Joe sniffed and nodded, smiling weakly.

“And so are you,” Emerson continued. “I may not have heard everything you said while I was… asleep… but I knew you were with me. I felt you by my side, always. So don’t you dare say that you weren’t helping. It… you gave me something to fight for.” He cringed. “Sorry, I’ve just realised how incredibly cheesy that sounds.”

Joe laughed wetly. “Yes, it does. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Good, because I don’t have the energy to be any more eloquent at the moment.”

They settled into a comfortable silence, Joe still holding on to Emerson’s hand as if for safekeeping, or perhaps just to be sure it was really there. He fretted unevenly at the fleshy pad between thumb and palm, rolling and squeezing it tenderly between his fingers. Half-remembered tears teased their way down his cheek, their paths leaving looping, oddly blithe, trails behind them.

“You being… ill… it made me realise something. Well, not realise… I already knew it really. But it made me want to be clear, because I don’t think I have been always. Not with you. Not as much as I should have been.”

When Joe was trying to say something important, he spoke in a wonderfully bashful spiral, beginning at the outermost place and steadily working his way circuitously to the crux point. Emerson waited, his breath suspended midway down his lungs. He knew Joe would get there eventually.

“I love you, Emerson. I know this is at least a year overdue, but I do. More than I can say. When I thought I might lose you, I... it put everything into perspective. I couldn’t bear the thought of not having told you how I feel. All the things stopping me before suddenly seemed… irrelevant.” He looked deep into Emerson’s eyes. Emerson felt a thrill run through his body as the blue irises soaked into his vision. His own face was reflected back at him, paler and thinner than he remembered, but no less solid for all that. His vision blurred again, mixing blue eyes with brown, Joe’s face with his, both mingled in an equal harmony. He could not tell where Joe ended and he began – maybe there were no beginnings or ends anymore, just a complete circle. The most perfect sphere, without north, south, east or west.

He felt rather than heard Joe speaking. “I’m sorry that it took you getting hurt for me to stop being an idiot. But, if you’ll let me, I’ll make up for it by telling you, and showing you, every day how much you mean to me. I don’t think I could stop now anyway – you’ll get so fed up of hearing it.” Joe brushed a light kiss against Emerson’s lips. “I love you,” he whispered. “I think I always have.”

* * *

Emerson watched as Joe rotated his shiny key by ninety degrees in the lock of their front door, and allowed himself to be shepherded inside, Joe’s spare arm lying protectively across the small of his back. He was grateful for Joe’s steadying weight behind him, a supportive presence to bolster his still fragile form. He had been absurdly nervous about coming home. On the one hand, he could barely wait to escape the claustrophobia of the ward, where privacy was a thing unknown, but at the same time, just the thought of being back out on Whitechapel’s streets caused a metallic tritone taste of fear in Emerson’s mouth. He knew he was being irrational – that the Krays were dead and Bousfield behind bars – but that had not stopped him from lying awake for most of the previous night replicating both attacks in his head again and again until they merged into one. When he finally did sleep, his dreams were an atonal chaos of red screaming, of guns and batons and faceless men.

He had said nothing about his anxiety to Joe – he had caused him enough worry already – but he sensed that the older man had guessed anyway. There was a studied banality about the way he clicked and latched the door shut, the stoop of his back as he bent to retrieve the handful of letters poised on the mat and placed them, neatly, unopened, on the envelope holder in the hall. He seemed to be making a deliberate effort to create as indistinct a homecoming as possible, to put Emerson at his ease. And, to Emerson’s surprise, it appeared to be working. Apart from the acute, but dulling, aches and pains he felt as he walked, and the hospital discharge form in his pocket, it could have been any ordinary day getting back after a long shift. Yet like a whole tone scale, it felt strange and familiar all at once. Strange because it was so familiar. After over two months in hospital, he expected the flat to feel different, that it would be jealous of its space, resentful of his prodigal return. But it welcomed him in as it always had, as though he were the missing note needed to resolve the chord back to harmony. It even smelt the same.

Gazing about the flat, regaining his bearings, Emerson noticed that the Pre-Raphaelite calendar on the wall was still stuck on January. It spoke volumes that Joe, usually so fastidious about things like that, had not moved it on while Emerson was in hospital. He smiled. Joe had literally stopped time for him. He flicked the pages over to the correct month of March, noting peripherally the day’s date. He had not realised that it was Easter Monday – most people in the hospital were too busy to mark public holidays. He found that he felt slightly hard done by that no-one had offered him an Easter egg. It seemed fitting somehow, that he should have been let out of hospital at Easter time, the whole idea of Easter being about rebirth and resurrection. A fresh start. A green blade rising out of sleeping soil. Not that he believed in the religious element of it anymore, but there was a nice symmetry that the former chapel chorister in him could appreciate.

Emerson followed Joe into the sitting room.

“Thank you,” he said faintly.

Joe frowned. “What for?”

“For… well, for everything really.” Emerson made a vague globe-shaped gesture in the air to express what he could not find the words for. “Right now, for driving me home. But also for staying with me, not giving up. I know it’s been hard for you.”

He traced his fingers over the bleary grey beneath Joe’s eyes, along the coral coloured scratch marks echoed on his forearm.

“I’m sorry I keep hurting you.”

Joe grabbed him fiercely yet gently by the shoulders and directed their gazes together.

“You have nothing to apologise for,” he said sternly. “You hear me? Nothing.”

He pulled Emerson into him (or did Emerson fall?) and locked them together in a comforting and tender kiss. Dizzily, Emerson wrapped his arms around Joe’s waist, both to stop himself from falling over and to create as little space between him and Joe as possible. He felt unable to ever let go. Joe’s tongue nudged questioningly at Emerson’s lips, as if seeking reassurance that he was there, alive and okay. Nodding against Joe’s mouth, he sank further in, so that not a particle, not a microtone, separated them.

This was the thing he had missed most during all those long weeks in hospital – the sensation of being completely surrounded by Joe, their bodies fusing together through the pressure points of mouths, hips, hands. He broke off with a hiss when Joe’s fingers accidentally brushed against the still delicate part of his ribs.

“Oh God, sorry.” Joe withdrew in a fluster, sheepishly easing Emerson down onto the sofa.

“It’s alright,” said Emerson. “I’d rather that than you feeling you couldn’t touch me. I couldn’t bear that. Just… let me feel normal. As much as possible.” He crooked a look at Joe out of the corner of his eyes. “And you don’t have anything to apologise for either.”

Joe smudged a smile. “Good, then. I’ll make a start on some dinner, yes?”

He slipped off his jacket and laid it neatly over the sofa back, bending briefly to drop a soft peck on Emerson’s forehead, before walking into the kitchen area. The jacket smelt of him, of menthol and musk, of morning and midnight rolled into one. Emerson leaned his head back, breathing in the scent. The herbal fragrance of residual tiger balm was certainly very relaxing. He could understand why Joe used it when he was under stress. A twinge of guilt stabbed at him when he thought about how often he had been the, albeit unwitting, cause of Joe’s anxiety.

He had decided not to bring up the subject of marriage for a while. Not until he was sure Joe would cope with the idea. He did not mind waiting – he was happy, oh so happy, with what he had already. Joe loved him, and that was enough. He was not about to push his luck just yet. Although Joe seemed much more tranquil now than he ever had been, fuzzier at the edges, more placid. He could almost be described as cosy, and Emerson was sure he had never been called that before. And a little voice at the back of Emerson’s mind prodded at him, reminding him of something he had forgotten, something encouraging but hidden.

“Carbonara alright?” asked Joe, clattering a pan onto the hob.

“Perfect, thanks,” he replied, enjoying watching Joe’s lean frame bend and twist over the oven.

“I was thinking,” Joe said as the violet surge of gas whistled aflame. “Once you’re fully recovered, we should go away somewhere. Somewhere special.” A splash and rattle of dried pasta being immersed in water.

“You want to go on holiday?” said Emerson in surprise. “Normally it’s as much as I can do to get you to clock off on time. And somehow I can’t imagine you lying on a beach in your shorts.”

Joe threw an irritated look at him. Emerson stifled a giggle, partly at the indignant expression Joe was wearing, and partly at the vision that had leapt into his head of him rubbing sun cream onto Joe’s bare chest, while Joe reclined on a deckchair in Bermuda shorts. Actually, that would not be a terrible idea. Then again, Joe and sand would probably not make a good combination.

“Well, I think we deserve a break, don’t you?” said Joe, in that exaggerated way that he had. “And I was thinking of something a bit more interesting than a trip to the coast. Somewhere that would be a ‘trip-of-a-lifetime’, as I believe it’s called. Something we’d remember. Isn’t there anywhere like that you’d like to visit?”

Emerson cocked his head in thought. “Well, I’ve always fancied going to Japan. You know, read some proper manga in the place where it originated. And you’d have all the sushi you could eat. And there are beautiful gardens, and temples, and so much history and culture.” He sighed wistfully. “It would be amazing. But we’d never get the time off work to go. We’d need at least a couple of weeks, if not three, to do it properly and HQ wouldn’t let us both take so much leave together at once.”

“Why don’t we call it a honeymoon, then? They can’t begrudge us time off for that.”

Emerson felt his brow crease into a confused frown. “Don’t be silly. We can’t call it a honeymoon unless we… get married… first…” His voice trailed off, as the full import of what Joe had said struck him. Anticipation sprang on his tongue, blocking his words. He hoped, prayed, that he understood correctly.

Joe’s eyes spoke first, creasing at the edges and radiating a joyful yet mischievous beam across his whole visage. “Exactly.”

He set the spatula down on the surface top, a neat parallel to the rings of the hob, but not noticing, or not caring, that a trickle of starchy water was pooling underneath it on the granite worktop. He loped over to the sitting room and knelt down beside Emerson. There was an unusual rosiness to his cheeks, most likely due to having been recently standing over a pan of boiling water. The possibility that the cause of his flush was something else occurred to Emerson, but he was still so stunned that his brain could not fathom what to do with that information.

“Joe?” He knew that he was doing his cow-eyes, his look of the wide-eyed innocent that he hated, but he could not help it. Something warm was soaring up his gullet and he did not know if he was about to burst into laughter or tears or both.

Joe looked at him, all teasing vanished. “To misquote you, this _is_ a proposal, as long as you want it to be.” He drew a deep breath, not nervously, not hesitantly, but a sure and solid inhalation. “Emerson Kent, would you, could you, marry me?”

Emerson grinned so hard his jaw felt as though it was about to come apart at the hinge.

“Yeah, go on then.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm nearly at the end. There will be an epilogue to follow shortly, just to round everything off.


	10. Chapter 10

“Em, come here a minute.”

“Joe, I really need to get everything in the suitcase. I thought we’d be home hours ago, and the taxi’s booked for six a.m. tomorrow, and…”

Joe interrupted him, a playful glimmer in his voice. “I know, just come here.”

Emerson padded heavily over to him, fuzzy with an effervescent tiredness. His eyes were bleary and his movements increasingly sluggish, but the tilt of his head upon his shoulders revealed that he was still running on the adrenaline of the day. When he walked within arms’ reach, Joe drew him close, crushing him gently to him.

“I’ve hardly had you to myself all day.”

“You’ll have me all to yourself for two and a half weeks while we’re away,” said Emerson, muffled into Joe’s chest. “If I ever finish packing so we can actually go.” He tried half-heartedly to pull out of Joe’s embrace, but did not need much persuasion to stay put when Joe refused to give way.

They had got back home much later than they’d planned. Joe had drafted a strict schedule – registry office at two, allowing time for some photographs either side of the ceremony, they would be out by three, then a few drinks at the pub before getting home around six o’clock. That left plenty of time to eat something and any last ditch packing attempts before an early night. Everything had gone according to plan, until Miles had persuaded them to turn ‘a few drinks’ into ‘a bit of a piss up.’

“There are those of us who’ve been rooting for you two for nearly eight years,” he had said, waving a pint in Joe’s direction. “Sanders here,” nodding towards the balding man beside him, “he says he clocked it from day one.”

Slightly worse for wear from the far end of several glasses of champagne, Miles spread an arm across Joe’s back and jiggled him amicably. “So let us have a proper chance to celebrate and show our appreciation of you, sir. You wouldn’t let us give you a stag party.”

“No. I wonder why,” said Joe drily.

“Christ, you’re such a wet blanket. I thought I’d taught you better than that.” Miles’ words were accusatory, but his eyes had a wicked glint. Teasing, not mocking.

Joe adopted what Miles called his ‘headmaster voice’, hard as his wooden desk, though the effect was lost in the honeyed atmosphere of the pub. “I’m all for having a good time, but my only experience of stag parties is the number of drunk and disorderlies we get in the cells on a Friday night.”

“Mansell and I would have looked after you.”

“Yes, that’s what I’d be most worried about.”

Miles punched him softly on the shoulder. “Oi. Haven’t I taken good care of you these past few years?”

Joe smirked. “You still can’t make a decent cup of tea.”

Joe enjoyed the badinage he and Miles shared. It had evolved slowly over the years, from such inauspicious beginnings. Their friendship had grown over the years, becoming spiky and soft at the same time, like a feather pillow with the odd quill poking through now and then. Their blows aimed to tickle, not to wound.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Miles, “I nearly forgot. Me and the family got you something for your honeymoon.” He rooted in his jacket pocket, a crooked frown pucking his face. “It’s in here somewhere.”

“You didn’t need to, Miles,” said Joe, faintly apprehensive as to what he might have come up with. Miles was not above buying a gag gift just to make Joe squirm. Then again, he said it was from the whole family – hopefully Judy would have had some moderating influence.

Miles had known Joe for long enough that he had developed an ability to read his mind. Either that, or Joe’s thoughts shouted so loudly that they might as well have been emblazoned across his forehead.

“Don’t worry,” Miles placated. “It’s a nice present. I haven’t gone and got you any Spanish Fly or anything like that. I figured you were big and ugly enough to get that for yourself if that’s what rocks your boat.” He winked with a lewd grin.

“Very funny, Miles,” said Joe, battling in vain against the spreading blush sweeping up his neck.

“Ah, here it is,” Miles exclaimed, withdrawing a folded piece of paper from within the folds of his jacket and holding it up triumphantly like an Olympic medallist. “Here you go. For while you’re in Tokyo. It’s two tickets for one of those traditional tea drinking ceremonies they have over there. You can bring back a bit of civility to the office tea run. And if you can get a photo of Kent in a kimono you’ll win me twenty quid.”

“Miles,” gulped Joe. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to say anything. Just enjoy it.”

Miles lifted his glass in a salute and poured a flooding mouthful down his throat. The cosy light from the wall sconces filtered into the liquid with a cheerful gleam, bouncing and twinkling like fireflies in the golden liquid. Not for the first time, Joe felt a thankful weight settle in his stomach, warm like the alcohol in his own system. A round barrel filled to the brim with all the unspoken times Miles had helped him, or given him support, or simply been a friend and companion. From the very first time Miles had dragged him to that caff and force-fed him pie and mash and common sense, to the countless moments over the past few months when he had been Joe’s rock and closest ally, bringing him what he needed to have and saying what he needed to hear. Some combination of parent, brother and guide. Joe had never properly thanked him, for any of it.

“Miles, I…” he swallowed.

Miles rolled a sidelong look at Joe, half a smile winding up his cheek. “You’re going to hug me aren’t you?”

Joe spluttered. “Do you want me to?”

Miles laughed, a full open-mouthed laugh. It was not pretty, it was not delicate. It was brash, ear-splitting and big, like a brass band imperfectly tuned. But to Joe it felt more truthful, more eloquent than anything more socially acceptable.

“Come here you great lump,” said Miles, hauling Joe by his shoulders into a giant bear hug. The breath whooshed out of Joe’s lungs as he was squashed against Miles’ ribcage, his back bent awkwardly with his neck caught in the crook of Miles’ elbow. A lack of poise evidently extended to Miles’ hugs as well as to his laughter, but Joe did not care. It suited him.

Just as Joe was beginning to get restless under the sustained contact, Miles suddenly tensed and shoved Joe away from him, his gaze fixed on something beyond Joe’s shoulder.

“Hey, put that down!” he shouted. “The little idiot, what’s he think he’s doing in a room full of policemen?”

Miles bounded like a roused wildebeest to the far end of the bar, where his seventeen year old son Liam had just bought and was attempting to drink a pint of lager. Joe was left, feeling a little like a squashed cushion, standing next to Sanders.

“Congratulations then, sir,” said Sanders, making polite conversation. Though ‘polite’ was a relative term where Sanders was concerned.

“Thank you Sanders,” replied Joe. “You’re living in Rochester now, aren’t you? Do you like being in Kent?”

“Yeah, deffo, it’s great…” Sanders smirked and mumbled something under his breath which sounded suspiciously like _I could ask you the same thing_ but Joe must have misheard because Sanders continued: “I can take the kids over to Whitstable on the weekends,” and it would have been wildly inappropriate anyway, wouldn’t it?

Joe had in fact been very touched that his former DC, Sanders, who had moved out of Whitechapel shortly after the Ripper case, had come back to wish them well. In fact, as he looked round the glowing pub lounge his stomach shifted warmly to see how many friends he seemingly had. When he had first thought about whom he would want witnessing his and Emerson’s union, and who would celebrate it with them, his initial reaction was ‘as few people as possible’. Miles and Judy, and Emerson’s mother and Erica. And Mansell would presumably come as Erica’s plus one. And it would be nice to have Ed there as well. And if they all were coming, Riley and Llewellyn and their families could not be left out. And Emerson wanted his three old flatmates to come as well. Suddenly, they had a guest list of more than twenty people, all of whom Joe found he actually wanted there. All of whom, in one way or another, to his great surprise, he counted as his friends.

The concept of friendship, mutual, affectionate friendship, was relatively new to Joe – before Whitechapel it was acquaintances only that he had collected, rather like stamps. They were neat, orderly, kept locked away until he needed them or wanted to add to them. They were only as good as how valuable they could be, how rare, how important. Acquaintances were logical, sterile, but soulless.

But friends, friends were messy. They acted unexpectedly, unpredictably, noisily, humanly. Like Liam getting a sound bollocking from Miles, or little Martha Miles playing hide-and-seek under the tables with Llewellyn’s children. Or Mansell trying to initiate Ed into the delights, or dangers, of Jägerbombs. Ed playing along on the surface, but secretly pouring the shots into strategically placed pot plants when Mansell was not looking. Judy’s choice of hat, which, to be perfectly honest, could have rivalled the space shuttle for intricacy and futuristic design, not to mention size. Or any of the raucous polyphonic laughter resounding from the rest of them. Friends got in the way, altered your path, changed your course unalterably. Joe had not even realised it was happening at the time, and if he had he would probably have denied it, but these people, this odd collage of characters, had formed who he had become. They had crept up on him, with their teasing and their quarrelling. Their rough edges had rounded his sharp corners, each of them in their own way. Joe found he had a fondness for them all. No, fondness was not the right word. It went beyond affection. These disparate individuals were necessary to him.

Even Mrs Kent, pursed in a corner. She was family now after all, the proverbial mother-in-law. His actual mother-in-law, in fact. Joe never thought that he would have one of those. He never really thought that he would have any friends. To need other people had always felt like a weakness, an inconvenience, until he realised that he was stronger, more functional, more _whole_ than he had ever been before. He could not imagine celebrating such an important day without any of them.

Even the Commander had come over to offer his congratulations in a quiet corner of the bar, at a small remove from the rest of their group.

“Well, Joe,” he had said, a firm handshake between them, “You know I didn’t completely approve of your… um… relationship with DC Kent at first… but I can see that he makes you happy.”

“He does, sir, yes,” replied Joe.

“Well, very good. I wish you both all the very best.” The Commander turned to leave. He did not look particularly comfortable in a backstreet Whitechapel boozer, outside of his social milieu as he was. It was a mark of his regard for Joe that he had come along at all. Joe supposed he should feel grateful.

However, just as he approached the exit, the Commander halted, captured in still-life for a split second like a broken automaton. He retraced his steps back to Joe, who threw him a curious, questioning look.

“And by the way,” said the Commander, “I think your father would be proud.”

An eyelid-heavy nod, a squeeze of the shoulder, and he was gone, leaving Joe alone at the bar feeling strangely moved. That was the first time in his recollection that the Commander had shown any true emotion, or even indicated that he felt anything below the surface. Even when Joe’s father, his best friend, had died, he had remained repressed, buttoned-down like his uniform. As Joe had been, until Whitechapel and Emerson had together undone him.

Joe took a sip of his drink, the liquid turning solid in his throat, a sharp salty tang mixing into the bitter ale. He set his glass down upon the bar top and reached up to knead at his temples. It was an action he performed regularly when overcome with stress, but this time was different. This was no remedial massaging away of anxiety or tension, but rather an attempt to tune his mind, to fix the day into his memory so that he would not forget it. It was as though he were building a mental picture frame, to mould into his core the image of Emerson enshrined in the warm glow of the pub, the light glimmering off his wedding ring as though it shone out of him. Joe rolled his own matching ring around his finger as a talisman, the mark of his bond. It was funny, how such a tiny sliver of gold could signify so much. Joe had only been wearing it for a few hours, and already it felt like a part of his body, burnished into his skin. He didn’t feel it sitting on his finger, so much had it become bound to him, but he knew his hand would now feel empty without it. Much as he had never noticed his lungs breathing or his heart beating until Emerson had caused them both to stop and skip.

“You ok?”

Joe felt a faint pressure on his back as Emerson joined him and settled an arm around his waist.

He breathed a smile that he could feel radiating through him. “Yes. I believe I am.”

As his eyes met Emerson’s, he wondered whether his were as bright as those before him. Did his own eyes beam with such soft radiance, as though they were laughing at a private joke known only to the two of them?

Emerson grabbed his hand, entwining their fingers. Their rings clicked together with a bell-like sound.

“Come on, Mum and Erica want to induct you into the Kent family traditions.”

The jerk of bewildered panic that he felt in his stomach must have translated onto his face, as Emerson snorted a smothered snigger. His bearing spoke of mischief.

“Yes, didn’t I tell you?” he said, with half a wink, “Every summer the whole family goes camping in Wales, whatever the weather. Last year mine and my cousin Alexander’s tent nearly got washed away – it was brilliant.”

Against his will, Joe felt distaste wind around his mouth, twisting it into a thin arc.

“Em, I don’t think…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” interrupted Emerson. “As the newest member of the family you’ll get the good tent. It doesn’t leak as much as the others.”

A breathless, horrified pause was sustained between them for a taut moment until Emerson gasped suddenly in delighted mirth. He kissed Joe’s cheek, making his flesh chuckle.

“Oh your face! I wish I had a camera.”

Joe audibly relaxed like a whistling kettle clicking off the boil. “You were joking,” he said, weakly.

Emerson trilled in amusement. “Of course I was joking. I hate camping just as much as you do. Probably more, seeing as I’ve actually tried it.”

“You’re a terrible man, Emerson Kent.”

The younger man shrugged. “Well, you married me,” he said impishly. “Now come on, I think Mum wants a photo of us with her for her wall. She’s quite come round to you, you know.”

Just like that, Joe found he was accepted into Emerson’s family. Family photographs, smiles, support. Belonging. If Joe had been different, less uptight, could he have done it earlier? It would be one of his biggest regrets, that he had wasted so much time fretting, panicking over small things, picking over details like grit from an oyster, when if he had just let it happen organically they might have flourished much sooner. He could go on endlessly thinking like that – he had before. If this, if that. If he had… if he hadn’t… If. On its own, a meaningless syllable, but it carried so much weight. A miniscule word that could go on, restraining forever if he let it. The groan of the ‘i’, the neverending puff of the ‘f’. If he continued like that, he would pull the word into an infinite string to tie himself in knots with.

But it could also be a word of hope, couldn’t it? Of possibility. A ‘what if’ rather than an ‘if only’. Not a rope to hold him back but a garland to bind them together, him and Emerson. The past was just that, it could not be changed. It was a bitter, inflexible place and to try to live there was foolish. All it did was lock you up and prevent you from moving forward.

_Our lives are in front of us_ , Joe realised _._ The thought fizzed inside him like champagne. Bubbles only travel upwards, after all.

He realised that Emerson was tipping his head to look at him, an anxious shimmer in his gaze. He had carried that expression too many times before. Joe never again wanted to be the cause of it.

“You sure you’re alright? This isn’t all too much for you?”

“Yes, I’m…” Joe struggled to find the words to convey what he was thinking. “I’m… I think you would call it content. Like I can finally allow myself to be happy. And to enjoy it… It’s not a feeling I’m particularly familiar with.”

Emerson reached up to kiss him softly as the concern in his eyes melted. “Well you’d better get used to it. This is just the beginning.”

It had gone ten before they managed to extricate themselves, the festivities showing little signs of abating. Getting home, it amused Joe that, for once, Emerson was the more anxious one, agonising over how much wet weather clothing to pack, fussing about passports, boarding passes, baggage allowances. It was as if he had never travelled abroad before. Then again, he had not exactly had a lot of time for foreign travel in the time that Joe had known him – the job had always got in the way. Another thing Joe had to feel guilty about, except that he was done with guilt, through with overthinking, over analysing. He knew that the packing needed to be done, but they had time. They had as much time as they wanted. The tempo was theirs to control.

So when he had managed to draw his partner into an embrace, he was not about to let it end too soon.

“Stop wriggling,” hushed Joe, kissing the top of Emerson’s head. “I just wanted to do this.”

He shuffled his feet into a steady pace and began to revolve on the spot, drawing Emerson into his sway. Emerson’s legs instinctively moved to Joe’s pulse, a trusting sleepwalk unconsciously stepping in sync.

“What on earth are you doing?” asked Emerson, looking up at him, a perplexed but jovial furrow on his brow.

In answer, Joe simply bent down to plant a dry kiss on the apex of Emerson’s nose. “Can’t I have a dance with my husband on our wedding night?”

A thin silvery shiver, like a harpist’s glissando, ran up his vertebrae at that word. Husband. It amazed him how natural it sounded. How effortless it felt.

_This is Emerson, my husband._

He felt a matching shudder vibrate through Emerson’s body.

“But there’s no music,” he said.

“I know,” Joe hummed under his breath, almost soundlessly. “I don’t need it. I’ve got you.”

They swayed together, to a rhythm of their own choosing, not needing anything more than just knowing the other was alongside, that their chests rose and fell in unison, that their hearts kept beating. Packing could wait. Everything could wait. Soon, they would segue on to the next movement, the next chapter, but for now, in that moment, their silent chord was sustained and the world waited.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your comments and kudos. This is the first time I've attempted writing a multi-chapter fic and your support has really helped keep me going. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I have the early plans for a sequel in my head, as I can't quite bring myself to let go of these characters yet.  
> Thanks all, Yveta xxxx


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